One Acre Fund Operations Associate Kenyan Jobs

Wanted
Exceptional professionals with 2 to 5+ years of work experience to serve in a career-track position that combines both field and management experience.

Job Location
Rural Kenya (English required).

Duration
Minimum 2 years commitment, full-time job.

Organization Description
Most of the world's poor are farmers, representing the largest and most uniform group of poor people in the world. One Acre Fund is a growing social enterprise in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania that is innovating a new way of helping farm families to achieve their full potential. Instead of giving handouts, One Acre Fund invests in farmers to generate a permanent gain in farm income. We provide farmers with a "service bundle" that includes education, finance, seed and fertilizer, and market facilitation. Our program is proven impactful – every year, we weigh thousands of harvests and measure 50-100% average gain in farm income per acre. We have laser-like focus on generating better lives for the people that we serve.

Job Description
Rapid organization growth translates into great career opportunities for our staff. We invest heavily in careers – we want to develop our next group of country directors, R&D directors, and partnership leaders.

The Operations team plays an integral role in the day-to-day operations of One Acre Fund, including but not limited to inventory management, input delivery to our clients, procurement, customer service, field support, and HQ support.

The Operations team is looking for associates who will play a crucial role in creating, streamlining and facilitating processes among all teams at One Acre Fund including Field, Finance, IT, Logistics, Procurement, and more. We are looking for people who can forge a bridge between our ever-evolving field operations and the technical, data-heavy moving pieces working behind the scenes to support those field operations. The ideal candidate will have a background in systems design, supply chain management, industrial engineering, financial analysis or management consulting and will also have the flexibility to work in a fast-paced and non-traditional environment.

Some questions tackled by the Operations team this year include:

• How can we coordinate a complex set of deliveries, balancing factors such as:
  • Varied individual client orders
  • Maintaining sufficient inventory and tracking inventory flows
  • Securing and operating a fleet of trucks
  • Loading and delivering on a tight schedule
  • Field complexity – scheduling considerations, specialized needs, unexpected challenges
• How can we deliver a bag of live sweet potato vines to every single One Acre Fund farmer in Kenya within 24 hours of being cut at the farm?
• How can we quickly determine which farmers have met our payment targets and send out incentives in a timely fashion, making sure that the incentives go to the right people and are actually received by our clients?
• How can we handle customer service issues at scale, when an individual complaint involves mining through several datasets?

Operations Associates will be asked to tackle 2-4 substantial projects, working closely with other teams and managing staff, project calendars and deliverables for those projects. We’re looking to find ways to leverage the mountains of data available to us to improve and add to our services to clients. We’re also looking to improve the processes already used by our teams to minimize headaches and improve efficiency, allowing us to continue our accelerated growth. The Operations Associate role is perfect for a technically-minded, detail-oriented professional who wants their work to have direct ties to meaningful, high impact work.

Career Growth and Development
One Acre Fund invests in building management and leadership skills. Your manager will invest significant time in your career development. We provide constant, actionable feedback delivered through mentorship and through regular management consulting-style career reviews. We also have regular one-on-one meetings, where we listen to and discuss career goals, and work collaboratively to craft roles that each person can be passionate about.  Because of our rapid growth, we constantly have new high-level roles opening up and opportunities in many functions. This results in fast career growth for our staff.

Qualifications
We are seeking exceptional professionals with 2 to 5+ years of work experience, and a demonstrated long-term passion for international development. They will serve in a career-track position that combines both field and management experience.

We are looking for truly extraordinary candidates that will help take our organization to the next levels of impact and scale. This is a competitive posting for a career-track role with minimum initial commitment of two years. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Strong work experiences. Examples include a demanding professional work experience, or successful entrepreneurial experience (e.g. starting a field program in a developing country, leading a conference, starting a business, solid Peace Corps accomplishments).
• Experience in industrial engineering, systems design, supply chain management, finance, or other technical roles is a plus. Please highlight any such relevant experience in your application.
• Leadership experience at work, or outside of work.
• Proficiency in Excel required. Experience with MS Access, other database management or data analysis software a plus!
• Top-performing undergraduate background (please include GPA and test scores on your resume).
• Humility and personal stability. We have a fantastic and likeable team. We are looking for passionate professionals that combine strong leadership skills with good humor, patience, and a humble approach to service.
• A willingness to commit to living in rural areas of East Africa for at least two years – this is a long-term, career-track role. The ideal candidate will have at least one year demonstrated experience working in the developing world, although this is not a strict requirement.
• Ability to cook/ laugh – desirable.
• Language: English required in Kenya.

Preferred Start Date
Flexible

Compensation
Starts modest. However, this is a career-track role with fast raises for performance, paying a meaningful salary for long-term placement in developing nations.

Benefits
Health insurance, immunizations, flight, room and board.

Sponsor International Candidates
Yes

To Apply
Complete this form. You will be prompted to submit your CV and cover letter. You may also be asked to submit work samples for some positions. Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs), please submit a copy of your Description of Service (DOS) in the appropriate section.

East Africans are strongly encouraged to apply