DFS Lab Companies are Hiring! Pula seeking Chief Technology Officer.
One of our portfolio companies, Pula, is looking for a world-class CTO to help develop a platform that will bring insurance to millions of smallholders farmers across the world. Check it out!
You can also learn about our other portfolio companies here. Have questions? Chat with us on Facebook or Twitter.
Position: Chief Technology Officer
Reports to: Chief Executive Officer
Location: Nairobi, Kenya, Full-Time
Employment type: Full-Time
Start date: ASAP
Compensation: Market rate cash compensation + stock options
If you love working in a dynamic environment where the demands are high, where you will be challenged every day and where you will get to deliver solutions that positively impact millions of farmers in emerging markets, then this role is for you!
We are looking for an exceptional and best-in-class technology guru to build our engineering team in pursuit of our goal of building a billion dollar business that protects and advises rural farming communities across Africa and Asia.
About Us
Pula is an early stage insurance technology company with a radically different approach to insurance. We target people who have never bought insurance before, starting with farmers. Most of our customers are semi-literate so our products must be simple to understand, easy to access and distribute, and cost effective.
Most of the poor in developing countries rely on farming as their main source of income and food. Farmers experience risks every day as an inherent part of their
livelihood, whether caused by climate shocks such as drought or flooding or pest and disease.
These risks currently prevent these farmers from investing in their farms, resulting in low yields, food insecurity and poverty. We look to provide technology enabled insurance products and related agronomy and climate advisory services that enable farmers to cover most of their production risks and ensure they maximize their harvest and hence secure their income.
In the last 3 years, Pula has developed insurance solutions that in 2016 reached over 400,000 farmers across 5 countries in Africa, we are on rapid growth path to reach one million farmers by the end of this year and are now looking to expand to Asia. For a brief on our work so far, watch our TED talk.
In the next 5 years we will further build on satellite and remote sensing technology to build our insurance and advisory products and look to leverage cutting edge technology solutions to deliver our product to millions of farmers across Africa and Asia.
What you will be working on?
You will be a C-level member of Pula’s executive team and will be responsible for building and managing our technology team. You will work closely with Pula’s other executives to take our customer-facing insurance and agronomy applications, back- office algorithms and innovations from pilot to scale while relentlessly automating operational processes and managing business technology systems to drive efficiency and performance.
You will translate the technology questions our teams have into practical solutions and deliver these solutions into sustainable and scalable technology. You will be
working with a small and capable team to implement Pula’s vision of insurance reimagined for the emerging markets.
You will be responsible for…
- Recruiting, onboarding, and managing a team of top quality engineers;
- Collaborating with the Product and Operations teams in strategic planning of product development activities;
- Ensuring a continuous flow of communication and collaboration between engineering teams and the rest of the business;
- Relentlessly automating operational processes and managing business technology systems to drive efficiency and performance;
- Using the Agile Development Methodology in developing customer-facing applications that can be tested within 4-weeks of conceptualization;
- Taking customer-facing applications and innovations from pilot to scale;
- Coordinating multiple, simultaneous implementation projects across different geographies and time zones ;
- Setting and managing expectations with integration partners including establishing key relationships with IT counterparts;
- Maintaining the highest quality of software engineering practices;
You will have the following capabilities and knowledge
Technology knowledge: You should intricately understand Pula’s full
technology stack and you must be on top of the newest and greatest tools that can save time and money.
Strong engineering discipline: You are able to apply practical knowledge to build better software and improve development velocity, and shouldn’t rely on anyone else for technical expertise.
Track record and background: You will have a Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering or related IT field and will have 5–7 years of work experience with a top-tier management or technology firm or the equivalent and experience in delivering enterprise-level software.
As a person you have a large, quality network: You should know where to look and who to call to fill the gaps in your knowledge.
Our workplace and culture
We develop solutions for farming communities and are guided by their needs, timelines and technology environments. This permeates all aspects of our day-to-day work.
Passionate about your field: you have a passion for technology and its role in creating value and changing the way farmers protect and grow their crops.
Travel: We work in several geographies and expect that to understand the technology environment you will be developing solutions for you will have to travel to these markets for in-market projects.
Work hours: We are not a 9–5 company and operate within flexible working hours to deliver in time for the cropping seasons our customers operate in.
Performance under pressure: You must be comfortable with consistently meeting and delivering on rising expectations.
