Product Manager – MEWAKA (Internal Opportunity) at Educate!

Africa has the world's youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more young people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined.

At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world's youngest continent.

Educate! prepares youth in Africa to learn, earn and thrive in today's economy by:

• Introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary and
• Delivering livelihood boot camps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.
  

To date, more than 500,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.

Educate! is a team of over 300 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations, and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows.

We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Livelihood Impact Fund, Jack Dorsey's #startsmall, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank's S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.

Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year.

Good to note: To Our Awesome Applicants!

We know that incredible candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don't meet every requirement. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply!

We're looking for passionate individuals who believe in our mission and can bring unique perspectives to our team—not just those who check every box. We value diversity and strongly encourage women and individuals from all backgrounds to apply.

Position Overview

The MEWAKA (TCPD) Product Manager plays a central role in redefining teacher professional development in Tanzania. Working cross-functionally with program delivery, field operations, government advocacy, impact, and revenue teams, the role sets product direction, translates learning into action, and adapts TCPD, particularly MEWAKA Cohorts, to Tanzania's context.

The ultimate goal of the role is to drive sustained educator behavior change through evidence-based, user-centered, and financially sustainable product design and delivery.

What You'll Do

Learning, Experimentation & Evidence Generation

Success in this function means establishing a strong learning agenda for MEWAKA Cohort 1 and translating product assumptions into structured experiments that generate actionable insights.

Key Responsibilities

• Collaborate with the Principal Product Product Strategist to develop, execute, and iterate on the MEWAKA Cohort 1 learning agenda, including an evaluation plan to assess strategy effectiveness.
• Translate hypotheses, features, and design assumptions into testing plans, pilots, and experiments.
• Work closely with the Product Associate to design and implement experiments that test product and design assumptions.
• Plan and run sprint cycles, including retrospectives, to refine MEWAKA features and delivery approaches.
• Collect, analyze, and synthesize quantitative and qualitative data from pilots, field tests, and cohort implementation.
• Summarize findings in clear, actionable formats to inform product decisions and strategy shifts.
• Monitor feature adoption and flag risks, gaps, or underperformance to the Principal Product Product Strategist.
  

User-Centered Product Strategy & Development

Success in this function means ensuring MEWAKA remains responsive to educator needs, frontline realities, and policy environments while continuously improving product relevance and effectiveness.

Key Responsibilities

• Contribute to and maintain a living product roadmap for MEWAKA Cohort 1, informed by user feedback, learning data, and policy enablers.
• Develop and update product feature maps aligned with MEWAKA's maturity, priorities, and trajectory.
• Conduct frontline research (observations, interviews, surveys) with teachers, trainers, youth, and implementation teams.
• Track outcomes and insights from co-designed government workshops and policy engagements, assessing implications for MEWAKA adoption and scale.
• Communicate the MEWAKA Cohort 1 strategy and key features to leadership, the impact unit, and relevant stakeholders, ensuring alignment across development and delivery processes.
• Ensure all product adaptations reflect Tanzania's institutional, contextual, and implementation realities.
• Participate in a government co-design workshop to clarify product strategy and support to advocate for practical skills buy-in from the government
  

Product Management, Documentation & Data Systems

Success in this function means building strong product discipline through documentation, shared systems, and a robust data backbone that supports iteration and scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, maintain, and update work plans, trackers, and implementation tools for MEWAKA-related activities.
• Maintain MEWAKA Cohort's–level metrics dashboards to track progress toward defined outcomes.
• Ensure consistency and usability of tools across designers, Product Managers, and delivery teams.
• Document insights and learnings from pilots, experiments, and cohorts, ensuring they feed directly into future iterations.
• Maintain a centralized product repository (e.g., Confluence/intranet) with playbooks, frameworks, strategies, and learning summaries.
• Strengthen documentation practices to support organizational learning and long-term product memory.
  

Cross-Functional Leadership, Delivery & Sustainability

Success in this function means aligning people, data, and resources to deliver MEWAKA Cohort 1 effectively while ensuring operational and financial sustainability.

Key Responsibilities

• Work closely with program and field teams to ensure smooth and effective implementation of MEWAKA Cohort 1 activities.
• Gather and synthesize input from stakeholders (teachers, trainers, youth, support teams) to inform ongoing product improvements.
• Coordinate with design, impact, and program implementation teams to ensure timely delivery of product features including managing the product designers to develop MEWAKA relevant designs.
• Support the Principal Product Product Strategist in cross-functional alignment, workstream coordination, and leadership meetings.
• Lead and participate in product rituals (planning sessions, retrospectives, reviews, retreats) to foster a culture of iteration and learning.
• Align activities with budgets, track BVAs, optimize resource use, and support transparent donor reporting.
• Lead the implementation of the Virtual Community of Learning (COL) strategy and teacher engagement activities in collaboration with the LMS Product Strategis
  

Who You Are

• Improved effectiveness of MEWAKA respective Cohorts through a clear learning agenda and impact strategy.
• Strong, visible data-driven decision-making embedded in product design and delivery.
• Clear documentation, shared understanding, and consistent product practices across teams.
• Evidence of sustained educator behavior change, feature adoption, and product relevance.
• Fits our Five Culture Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below); Learn more by looking at Educate!'s culture deck here
  

What We Offer

• A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team.
• Competitive salary based on experience.
• Learning & growth opportunities
  

Application Process: Rolling basis, interviews happening soon!

Terms

• Location Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
  

Our Culture & Tenets(Values)

We're ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We're inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.

• We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We are purpose-driven, focused on impact, and prioritize what truly matters. We listen to youth, design our efforts around their needs, and ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences they value.
• We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results—proactively identifying problems and seeking solutions without waiting or stopping at what's requested.
• We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded and continuously try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
• We are One Team, Many Views - We value all individuals, believe diverse ideas and open dialogue drive excellence, foster a supportive and respectful environment where everyone can freely express themselves. We work as one team and prioritize the organization's mission over personal or team interests.
• We have the Startup Mindset - We innovate relentlessly to grow our impact, we never think "we have arrived" or "we're done."We constantly challenge the status quo, embrace change, and move quickly toward our vision. Unafraid of failure, we question anything that hinders progress.
  

Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.

We're committed to ensuring all candidates are screened for child and youth safety. As part of the process, you'll need to provide a Certificate of Good Conduct. Educate! reserves the right to withdraw employment offers if any risks to youth are identified.