Job Opportunity for Technology Product Lead at Samhita in New Delhi

Organisation Overview (Samhita.org)

Samhita is a social impact consulting firm, with a vision to build a ‘better normal’. The better normal reimagines business environments where social value is an integral aspect of growth, putting stakeholders and environmental guardianship at the centre of business strategy, a strategy that evolves from inputs to outcomes, from individuals to ecosystem, and from delivering services to building capacity and enabling the market.

To do this, we support companies to align their core competencies with the needs of the social sector, and build catalytic partnerships with stakeholders with in-depth knowledge and networks to execute sustainable, outcome-oriented social impact initiatives. This approach bridges the gap between purpose and action, and forges business responsibility strategies that balance people, pro- t and planet, thereby creating a better normal for communities, environments and businesses.

Role Overview

The use of technology for social impact is currently in the midst of a significant transformation, as corporate CSR teams, philanthropies, NGOs and other stakeholders realign their impact narrative and beneficiary engagement models to the power of digital. Therefore, the challenge we face at Samhita is how to compete as well as collaborate in with others to ensure a rapid action and response to emerging social challenges, and hence now are looking to modernize our technology in order to support expanded digitization of both the front and back ends of our business operations.
Furthermore, the current COVID-19 situation requires adoption of the right technology capabilities (e.g., remote delivery, continuous beneficiary touchpoints, data analytics) that can anticipate and prepare for the “next normal” (e.g., accelerated shift to digital channels for end-to-end social service delivery). Therefore, we are looking to hire a dynamic, self-starter that can work with us to achieve the following vision:

• Reimagine the role of technology to be a business and innovation partner
• Reinvent technology delivery to drive a step change in productivity and speed
• Future-proof the foundation by building flexible and secure platforms

The role requires to work with both our existing tech platform, as well as a planned new platform that can seamlessly bring together philanthropic donors, implementation agencies and beneficiaries to a unified e-marketplace for social impact that automates and supports the entire lifecycle of social impact programs – Program Design Discovery, Donor Implementation partner connect, Bidding contracting, Payments, Beneficiary onboarding and management, Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Impact Assessment, as well as interfaces with other public and private systems in the social ecosystem.

We are hence looking for a Technology Product Lead to organize and drive strategic technology initiatives that help customers connect with our GoodCSR platform and GoodCSR business development team.

Your work will include developing the GoodCSR platform, spanning systems related to customer contact management and big data integration for CSR engagement. This is a dynamic role working directly with outsourced engineering and business partners. In this role, you will partner with (product) leadership to determine which platform elements have the highest impact and define goals to deliver these high impact elements to production. You will be the leader for the platform’s technology strategy working on complex cross-functional programs of work. You will need to anticipate (and de-risk) bottlenecks, manage escalations, make smart (data informed) tradeoff decisions, and balance the customer and business needs within our technical constraints. As a technology program owner for the platform, you’re accountable for development of the applicable technology strategy, its execution, and the achievement of its key outcomes.

An ideal candidate will be entrepreneurial, innovative (both with technology and in getting things done), highly influential, and able to steer through ambiguity. They will love using technology to solve complex problems in a high-growth environment with a passionate and engaged team, have a strong product management mindset for building durable solutions to problems at scale, and be able to successfully advocate for the needs of our millions of customers around the world.

Roles And Responsibilities

• You’ll define the mission, vision, and guiding principles for our most critical, strategic GoodCSR Platform elements; set the objectives, analyze data to inform decisions, drive customer and business outcomes, and influence the resourcing of your key initiatives to ensure they get done.
• You’ll identify and define new product initiatives to drive the overall GoodCSR flywheel, while maintaining a strong customer focus. In addition, you’ll ensure that the vision, architecture and execution of the NGO/beneficiary facing products used by our GoodCSR Platform and Partners.
• You’ll ensure tight alignment between our overall GoodCSR Platform strategy and our partner experience, and accelerate our mission to build a world-class sales experience for both agents and customers
• You’ll conduct customer discovery initiatives to uncover unmet customer needs and new market opportunities, improve business KPIs, and build data assets that give you deep understanding of the health of your product and opportunities for improvement. You’ll use insights from this work to thoughtfully create strategies to improve customer experience through the sales lifecycle, and will be a relentless advocate for the customer on the GoodCSR executive leadership team
• You’ll build a product roadmap prioritized through diligent value-at-stake analysis and partner with Engineering teams to balance investments to scale our product capability. You’ll test and learn, fail fast, rapidly iterate, and find creative ways to improve GoodCSR Platform and achieve end customer outcomes
• You’ll communicate and align with senior leadership throughout GoodCSR. You will effectively paint with context and drive high quality decisions.
• You’ll balance priorities across Marketing, Product and Design, Engineering, Operations, Finance, and more with clarity, candor, and a firm focus on your product strategy and north star metrics

Qualifications, Skills Experience

• 8 or more years as a Product Manager or Technical Product Manager leading Product / Engineering teams in an Agile environment.
• An entrepreneurial mindset, with a bias for customer focused innovation. Your customer obsession and data-driven decision-making will have become methods for finding insights that drive product priorities and strategy
• Excellent analytical skills with demonstrated experience turning data into actionable insights, clear opportunities, and viable solutions.
• Knowledge of complex government ERPs/ service delivery systems in India, and ability to work with government counterparts for any data exchange or systems integrations needs
• Ability to liaise with solution developers in order to both write functional requirement specifications, as well as was work with the developer team to oversee product development end-to-end
• Excellent organizational and cross-functional leadership skills. Your stakeholders praise your communication and collaboration, even though you say “no” to them sometimes
• The ability to develop communications frameworks that spur understanding, compel action at all levels in the organization, and deliver value to your customers
• An entrepreneurial spirit and a demonstrated track record of success creating large customer and business outcomes
• A bias to action and an ability to work at tempo to meet deadlines, handle and prioritize simultaneous requests, and manage large, cross-functional efforts
• If you have subject matter expertise with CRM, Sales Tools and building products for agents, that’s a plus
• It is advantageous to have PMP or Prince II certification

Work Location: Mumbai

Why Samhita?

• Make a big difference: Take, Own and implement.
• Leadership: This is the perfect opportunity to go beyond traditional roles and lead cutting edge Management and Research strategies. The candidate shall work alongside the brightest minds, in an environment that fosters growth and creativity
• Impact: Working with Samhita will provide you with an opportunity to bring about a positive change in the lives of millions
• Work Culture: Samhita has a team of young, hard-working, and dynamic individuals who strive for excellence while maintaining a humble outlook. Our work has been strengthened and supported by international and domestic donor agencies and foundations such as the Bill Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Tata Trusts, GIZ, DFID, the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, UNDP and the Power of Nutrition.
• Learning: Increase your problem-solving capabilities by delving into complex challenges.