About the Role
Embedded Finance is one of Zeraki's most strategic product initiatives. As we build the financial coordination layer for education, our success depends on deeply understanding customer problems and consistently translating them into products that create meaningful value for parents, schools and financial institutions.
As Product Manager – Embedded Finance, you will own the discovery, definition and delivery of Embedded Finance products. Working closely with customers, Product Design, Engineering and customer-facing teams, you will understand customer journeys, uncover unmet needs, frame product problems, define solutions and guide products from discovery through development, launch and continuous improvement.
You will be responsible for ensuring the team builds the right product before building the product right. Every product decision should be grounded in customer evidence, aligned with Zeraki's strategy and measured against meaningful customer and product outcomes.
Requirements
Key Responsibilities
The Product Manager – Embedded Finance will lead product development across the entire discovery and delivery lifecycle.
Opportunity Discovery
Identify meaningful customer problems worth solving by understanding customer needs, market trends and business priorities.
Define clear customer segments, problem statements, desired outcomes and opportunity hypotheses to determine which opportunities should progress into product discovery.
Prioritise opportunities using customer value, business impact, strategic alignment and available evidence.
Product Discovery & Validation
Lead product discovery by working closely with customers and internal teams to understand customer problems, validate assumptions and explore solution options.
Partner with Product Design to evaluate solution directions, define success criteria and ensure proposed solutions address validated customer needs.
Use customer evidence to determine whether initiatives should move forward, pivot or stop, ensuring product decisions are driven by learning rather than assumptions.
Product Definition
Translate validated customer learning into clear Product Briefs, product requirements and other delivery-ready product artefacts.
Define product scope, business rules, edge cases, acceptance criteria, success metrics and priorities to ensure every feature addresses a validated customer problem.
Balance customer value, technical feasibility and business viability when making product decisions throughout development.
Product Delivery
Partner closely with Engineering and Product Design throughout implementation to remove ambiguity, make timely product decisions and support successful feature delivery.
Stay actively engaged throughout delivery by clarifying requirements, managing scope decisions, reviewing completed work and ensuring delivered features remain aligned with validated customer needs.
Coordinate with customer-facing teams and strategic partners where required to support successful product launches and operational readiness.
Product Learning & Continuous Improvement
Measure customer outcomes after launch using product metrics, customer feedback, support insights and market feedback.
Lead post-launch reviews to understand what worked, what didn't and what should happen next.
Apply product learning to improve future prioritisation, strengthen the Embedded Finance roadmap and continuously evolve the product portfolio.
What Success Looks Like
Within your first six months, you will have:
Built and maintained a prioritised Embedded Finance roadmap aligned with Zeraki's strategy.
Established a repeatable product discovery process for Embedded Finance opportunities.
Successfully led initiatives through Opportunity Discovery, Product Discovery and Product Definition using Zeraki's Product Discovery Framework.
Established meaningful product outcome metrics and incorporated post-launch learning into future product decisions.
What We're Looking For
This role requires a hands-on Product Manager who enjoys solving complex customer problems and taking ownership from discovery through delivery.
You are comfortable working in ambiguity and can turn loosely defined opportunities into clearly understood customer problems, validated product decisions and well-defined product requirements. You ask difficult questions, challenge assumptions with evidence and make product decisions that keep teams focused on solving the right problem.
You have strong product discovery, problem-framing and decision-making skills. You're comfortable working with customers, Product Design and Engineering to define product scope, manage trade-offs and deliver products that create measurable customer outcomes.
You take ownership, collaborate effectively across teams and continuously use customer feedback and product performance to improve what gets built next.
What we offer
At Zeraki, you'll have the opportunity to work at the intersection of education, technology and financial services while helping shape one of the company's most strategic product areas.
You'll work closely with executive leadership, experienced product leaders, designers, engineers and leading financial institutions, gaining hands-on experience building products that improve education for millions of families across Africa.
You'll be trusted with meaningful ownership, supported by a collaborative team and challenged to grow as a Product Manager by solving real customer problems and making real product decisions.
Our culture
At Zeraki, our culture defines how we work, how we make decisions and how we succeed together. We are united by eight core values: Integrity, Love of Learning, Highest Standards, Deliver Results, Hire & Develop the Best, Manage Through Trust, Empathy, and Have Backbone; Disagree & Commit.
We act with integrity, doing what is right and taking ownership of our actions. We have a love of learning, staying curious and continuously seeking to improve. We hold ourselves to the highest standards, continually raising the bar in the quality of our work, and we deliver results by taking ownership, acting with urgency and following through on our commitments.
We hire and develop the best, surrounding ourselves with exceptional people and creating opportunities for them to grow and excel. We manage through trust, giving people the context, responsibility and support to do their best work.
We lead with empathy, creating an environment where people are respected, supported and able to thrive. We have backbone, disagree and commit—we speak up when we disagree, challenge ideas respectfully and, once a decision is made, commit fully to making it successful.
Together, these values create a culture of freedom and responsibility, high performance, continuous learning and meaningful impact, empowering every Zerakian to Be Extraordinary.
About the Company
Zeraki is a pioneering EdTech startup on a mission to redefine education across Africa. Our innovative technology tools are designed to make learning more accessible, effective, and engaging for parents, teachers, and students alike. At the heart of Zeraki is a deep-rooted passion for harnessing the power of education to unlock the potential of the continent's youth and drive transformative change. Zeraki proudly serves over 2.7 million users in 10 countries, establishing itself as one of Africa's leading EdTech companies.
Our commitment to excellence and innovation has not gone unnoticed. Zeraki was the proud recipient of the African Union Commission Innovating Education in Africa Award in 2022. Zeraki is one of three EdTech companies participating in the 2024 cohort of the EY AI SDG Accelerator and is also part of the 2024 cohort of the Microsoft Entrepreneurship for Positive Impact Program. Through these accolades and partnerships, Zeraki continues to shape the future of learning in Africa, demonstrating the transformative role of technology in education.