Senior Product Manager (AI-Native)
2026-09-09T12:53:07+00:00
Umba
https://cdn.greatkenyanjobs.com/jsjobsdata/data/default_logo_company/defaultlogo.png
https://www.umba.com/
FULL_TIME
Nairobi
Nairobi
00100
Kenya
Computers
Management, Computer & IT, Business Operations
2026-09-23T17:00:00+00:00
8
Background
Umba combines advanced tools and techniques to optimize risk exposures in emerging markets that are currently underserved by traditional banking services.
Job Summary
We are hiring a Senior Product Manager to own product strategy and execution for financial technology products end to end: discovery, spec, delivery, launch, and the metric that follows. You will work across the product lines we operate today and the ones we stand up next, and you will partner with senior leadership on where the next bet goes.
This is not a traditional product role. We operate in an AI-native environment. The team uses Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex, and similar tools to spec, prototype, and ship. The Senior PM is expected to write product and technical specifications that AI agents can execute against, drive delivery end to end, ship small PRs directly when it is faster than handing off, coordinate the stakeholders that turn a product into a business, and own the outcomes those products generate. The bar is moving 10x faster without sacrificing quality.
Responsibilities
The role spans two domains.
- Own the roadmap across your product lines, which may include credit and lending, savings and deposits, payments and foreign exchange, and new products in development.
- Run customer discovery directly with target segments, from individual borrowers and savers to SMEs, business operators, and freelancers.
- Size opportunities, instrument funnels, and validate hypotheses against production data. You do not wait for an analyst.
- Make prioritisation calls across very different product lines (a credit policy tweak vs. a new payments corridor vs. a deposit campaign) and defend them with numbers.
- Track competitor moves in the markets you operate in and translate them into product decisions.
Execution and Delivery
- Write product and technical specifications that engineers and AI coding agents can implement directly. Tight, unambiguous, testable.
- Prototype in Claude Design to validate concepts before committing engineering time.
- Code and ship small PRs yourself with Claude Code when it is faster than handing off. PMs here live in the codebase.
- Drive delivery end to end. Own scope, timeline, and quality.
- Run delivery in Linear, our product and project management surface.
- Run the cadence with Engineering: standups, sprint reviews, unblocking, bug triage, and trade-off calls when things slip.
- Coordinate across stakeholders: leadership, Engineering, Data, Credit, Operations, Risk, Compliance, and Marketing.
- Align scope, ship dates, and trade-offs across teams that have different incentives.
- Own outcomes, not output. Tie every initiative to a revenue, growth, or risk metric. Track it post-launch and iterate until the metric moves.
- Review AI-generated implementations, prototypes, and analyses for correctness, edge cases, and business fit.
- Build feedback loops: customer signal, spec, AI-assisted build, metric, next spec. Compress the cycle.
- Own launch comms and internal enablement.
Qualifications and Experience
- 5+ years in product management.
- Direct experience shipping consumer or SME products in fintech, banking, lending, or payments.
- Track record of owning outcomes. You measure yourself by the metric that moved (revenue, active users, default rate, deposit growth), not by what was planned or shipped.
- Strong stakeholder coordination. You drive alignment across the cross-functional set above without losing your own thread.
- Strong written communication. You can write a spec a senior engineer does not need to ask questions about.
- Comfortable reading production data yourself. SQL fluency, or willing to get there in week one.
- Demonstrated proficiency with AI tools in your daily workflow (Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex, and similar). You have shipped real work with them, not just experimented.
- Comfortable reading and writing code, enough to ship a small PR with Claude Code.
- High agency. You move from problem to validated solution to shipped product without waiting to be told.
- Able to read financial regulatory guidance in the markets you operate in and translate it into product requirements.
Highly Preferred
- Experience with credit products (origination, scoring, collections) and deposit products (rate strategy, treasury, funding).
- Exposure to foreign exchange, cross-border payments, stablecoins, or virtual account infrastructure.
- Experience working with engineering teams that use AI coding agents in production workflows.
- Prior work in emerging markets, particularly Africa, SEA, or LATAM fintech.
Bonus
- Founder or 0 to 1 product experience.
- Familiarity with trade finance instruments (invoice factoring, LPO financing, purchase order financing).
- Own the roadmap across your product lines, which may include credit and lending, savings and deposits, payments and foreign exchange, and new products in development.
- Run customer discovery directly with target segments, from individual borrowers and savers to SMEs, business operators, and freelancers.
- Size opportunities, instrument funnels, and validate hypotheses against production data. You do not wait for an analyst.
- Make prioritisation calls across very different product lines (a credit policy tweak vs. a new payments corridor vs. a deposit campaign) and defend them with numbers.
- Track competitor moves in the markets you operate in and translate them into product decisions.
- Write product and technical specifications that engineers and AI coding agents can implement directly. Tight, unambiguous, testable.
- Prototype in Claude Design to validate concepts before committing engineering time.
- Code and ship small PRs yourself with Claude Code when it is faster than handing off. PMs here live in the codebase.
- Drive delivery end to end. Own scope, timeline, and quality.
- Run delivery in Linear, our product and project management surface.
- Run the cadence with Engineering: standups, sprint reviews, unblocking, bug triage, and trade-off calls when things slip.
- Coordinate across stakeholders: leadership, Engineering, Data, Credit, Operations, Risk, Compliance, and Marketing.
- Align scope, ship dates, and trade-offs across teams that have different incentives.
- Own outcomes, not output. Tie every initiative to a revenue, growth, or risk metric. Track it post-launch and iterate until the metric moves.
- Review AI-generated implementations, prototypes, and analyses for correctness, edge cases, and business fit.
- Build feedback loops: customer signal, spec, AI-assisted build, metric, next spec. Compress the cycle.
- Own launch comms and internal enablement.
- SQL fluency
- Strong written communication
- Stakeholder coordination
- AI tool proficiency (Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex)
- Reading and writing code
- Financial regulatory guidance interpretation
- 5+ years in product management.
- Direct experience shipping consumer or SME products in fintech, banking, lending, or payments.
- Track record of owning outcomes.
- Strong stakeholder coordination.
- Strong written communication.
- Comfortable reading production data yourself. SQL fluency, or willing to get there in week one.
- Demonstrated proficiency with AI tools in your daily workflow (Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex, and similar).
- Comfortable reading and writing code, enough to ship a small PR with Claude Code.
- High agency.
- Able to read financial regulatory guidance in the markets you operate in and translate it into product requirements.
- Experience with credit products (origination, scoring, collections) and deposit products (rate strategy, treasury, funding).
- Exposure to foreign exchange, cross-border payments, stablecoins, or virtual account infrastructure.
- Experience working with engineering teams that use AI coding agents in production workflows.
- Prior work in emerging markets, particularly Africa, SEA, or LATAM fintech.
- Founder or 0 to 1 product experience.
- Familiarity with trade finance instruments (invoice factoring, LPO financing, purchase order financing).
JOB-6aa156b3f3a93
Vacancy title:
Senior Product Manager (AI-Native)
[Type: FULL_TIME, Industry: Computers, Category: Management, Computer & IT, Business Operations]
Jobs at:
Umba
Deadline of this Job:
Wednesday, September 23 2026
Duty Station:
Nairobi | Nairobi
Summary
Date Posted: Wednesday, September 9 2026, Base Salary: Not Disclosed
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JOB DETAILS:
Background
Umba combines advanced tools and techniques to optimize risk exposures in emerging markets that are currently underserved by traditional banking services.
Job Summary
We are hiring a Senior Product Manager to own product strategy and execution for financial technology products end to end: discovery, spec, delivery, launch, and the metric that follows. You will work across the product lines we operate today and the ones we stand up next, and you will partner with senior leadership on where the next bet goes.
This is not a traditional product role. We operate in an AI-native environment. The team uses Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex, and similar tools to spec, prototype, and ship. The Senior PM is expected to write product and technical specifications that AI agents can execute against, drive delivery end to end, ship small PRs directly when it is faster than handing off, coordinate the stakeholders that turn a product into a business, and own the outcomes those products generate. The bar is moving 10x faster without sacrificing quality.
Responsibilities
The role spans two domains.
- Own the roadmap across your product lines, which may include credit and lending, savings and deposits, payments and foreign exchange, and new products in development.
- Run customer discovery directly with target segments, from individual borrowers and savers to SMEs, business operators, and freelancers.
- Size opportunities, instrument funnels, and validate hypotheses against production data. You do not wait for an analyst.
- Make prioritisation calls across very different product lines (a credit policy tweak vs. a new payments corridor vs. a deposit campaign) and defend them with numbers.
- Track competitor moves in the markets you operate in and translate them into product decisions.
Execution and Delivery
- Write product and technical specifications that engineers and AI coding agents can implement directly. Tight, unambiguous, testable.
- Prototype in Claude Design to validate concepts before committing engineering time.
- Code and ship small PRs yourself with Claude Code when it is faster than handing off. PMs here live in the codebase.
- Drive delivery end to end. Own scope, timeline, and quality.
- Run delivery in Linear, our product and project management surface.
- Run the cadence with Engineering: standups, sprint reviews, unblocking, bug triage, and trade-off calls when things slip.
- Coordinate across stakeholders: leadership, Engineering, Data, Credit, Operations, Risk, Compliance, and Marketing.
- Align scope, ship dates, and trade-offs across teams that have different incentives.
- Own outcomes, not output. Tie every initiative to a revenue, growth, or risk metric. Track it post-launch and iterate until the metric moves.
- Review AI-generated implementations, prototypes, and analyses for correctness, edge cases, and business fit.
- Build feedback loops: customer signal, spec, AI-assisted build, metric, next spec. Compress the cycle.
- Own launch comms and internal enablement.
Qualifications and Experience
- 5+ years in product management.
- Direct experience shipping consumer or SME products in fintech, banking, lending, or payments.
- Track record of owning outcomes. You measure yourself by the metric that moved (revenue, active users, default rate, deposit growth), not by what was planned or shipped.
- Strong stakeholder coordination. You drive alignment across the cross-functional set above without losing your own thread.
- Strong written communication. You can write a spec a senior engineer does not need to ask questions about.
- Comfortable reading production data yourself. SQL fluency, or willing to get there in week one.
- Demonstrated proficiency with AI tools in your daily workflow (Claude Code, Claude Design, Codex, and similar). You have shipped real work with them, not just experimented.
- Comfortable reading and writing code, enough to ship a small PR with Claude Code.
- High agency. You move from problem to validated solution to shipped product without waiting to be told.
- Able to read financial regulatory guidance in the markets you operate in and translate it into product requirements.
Highly Preferred
- Experience with credit products (origination, scoring, collections) and deposit products (rate strategy, treasury, funding).
- Exposure to foreign exchange, cross-border payments, stablecoins, or virtual account infrastructure.
- Experience working with engineering teams that use AI coding agents in production workflows.
- Prior work in emerging markets, particularly Africa, SEA, or LATAM fintech.
Bonus
- Founder or 0 to 1 product experience.
- Familiarity with trade finance instruments (invoice factoring, LPO financing, purchase order financing).
Work Hours: 8
Experience in Months: 12
Level of Education: bachelor degree
Job application procedure
Application Link:Click Here to Apply Now
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