What Home+ Wants to Achieve…
We are building a new venture which makes your home worry free, less expensive to manage and more sustainable, while growing the South African economy of SMEs. We are backed by Santam, the market leader in general insurance in South Africa but we are not an insurance company ourselves. We are a tech company disrupting the home services, utilities and security markets. We expect the team members that we hire to shape the product, company and culture from the ground up.
We empower our product teams to solve hard problems in ways that our customers love, yet work within the constraints of our business. Our product teams are cross functional and durable, and are generally composed of a product manager, product designer, customer support and several engineers. We expect our product teams to have all of the skills necessary to come up with effective solutions that are valuable to our customers, feasible given our engineering skills & technology stack, viable for the business given our constraints and usable by our customers. The product manager is accountable for ensuring that a solution is both valuable & viable, while the Tech Lead is accountable for ensuring a solution is feasible and the product designer is accountable for ensuring the solution is usable.
We expect the Product Manager to have a deep knowledge of our customers and the data about how our customers engage with our products. The Product Manager is expected to track industry trends and the competitive landscape around our product. They must also understand the various constraints of the business – from marketing, sales, operations, finance, legal, data privacy etc.
Our Product Managers actively engage with the cross-functional product team to drive innovation and enable each member of the team to contribute their skills and ideas. We expect the Product Manager to collaborate closely with the designer, customer support and engineers on their team to discover effective solutions to customer problems and deliver those solutions to market.
We hold Product Managers and the product teams accountable for the results of their work. We are looking for Product Managers who are not afraid of owning their results, even if this means they have to work through others to achieve them. You will need to be able to influence your teammates, colleagues, stakeholders and executives through your use of data & logic.
You will work on challenging, thought-provoking work every day. You will work with a team of diverse, driven individuals and be exposed to a wide variety of Senior Santam stakeholders and strategic partners among others. You will report directly to the Chief Product Officer.
Key Responsibilities
● Develop a deep understanding of our customers and their problems, determine effective solutions to those problems and enable the product team to deliver those solutions
● Define the future vision for your product area (along with the Chief Product Officer) and the strategy we will take to achieve that vision. You should always know where we are heading and what we are focused on over the next 3 to 6 sprints.
● Be the custodian of the product team’s backlog. Define & prioritize epics & user stories. Groom the backlog along with lead engineers and drive sprint planning with the product team.
● Enable the product team to ship features every sprint which drive tangible user value and move our key metrics. You are held accountable for your output and its impact on metrics.
● Actively mitigate impediments (risks, issues, constraints, blockers) impacting successful team completion of release/sprint goals
● Regularly communicate status of the products to the broader team
Qualifications
● 5+ years’ experience in core product management, building products from scratch
Knowledge & Experience
● Experience of working in multi-disciplinary product teams (Experience designers, Product Owners, Engineers) within a fast-paced environment whilst maintaining calm under pressure
● Strong understanding of SCRUM development methodologies
● Evidenced understanding and application of human-centered design and delivery
● Strong understanding of mobile and web technologies and industries across B2C & B2B products
● A demonstrated desire to build products and services that customers will love
● Experience navigating ambiguous environments and solving complex problems while exercising good judgement
● Familiarity with tools such as JIRA/ Confluence/ Figma
Skills
● Ability to ‘think-out-of-the-box’ / lateral thinking with a balance short and long-term thinking
● High drive/self-starter/proactive and anticipate requirements
● Excellent attention to detail
● Strong coordination, prioritisation, organisational and planning skills
● Excellent interpersonal, communication and networking skills across all levels
● Professionalism, excellent judgement, use of discretion and problem-solving abilities
Competencies
● Collaboration
● Customer focus
● Metrics driven
● Stubborn yet Flexible and adaptable – rigid on the vision but flexible on the details to get there
● Cultivate Innovation
About this company
Home+ is a digital venture that transforms the way people manage and protect their households in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. We strive to reduce the cost of utilities through the use of smart technology, whilst linking homeowners to a trusted network of partners and tradespeople. Home+ offers service providers a platform to set up, grow, run and advertise their businesses, thus supporting job creation and SMME growth. As Home+ is backed by Santam, we leverage existing Santam resources and relationships to provide the best offerings to customers and service providers alike.