PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT MANAGER
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Job summary
Product Development Manager - (Agile/Scrum Software Engineering Environment | Enterprise / Financial Services– ready)
Min Qualification:
Bachelors
Experience Level:
Senior level
Experience Length:
8 years
Language Requirement:
English
Working Hours:
Full Time - 8 to 5
Applicant Location:
Kenya
Job descriptions & requirements
Reporting Line
Reports to: General Manager (GM)
Direct Reports:
• Solution Architect
• Senior Product Developers
• Product Developers
• UI/UX Designer
• Scrum Master
Role Purpose
The Product Development Manager is responsible for leading the engineering function within the organization, ensuring the effective design, development, and delivery of high-quality software solutions that align with business objectives and customer needs. The role provides both technical and managerial leadership across
multiple Agile Scrum teams, ensuring that engineering practices, architectural standards, and delivery processes are optimized for scalability, reliability, and speed.
The incumbent plays a critical role in translating product vision into robust technical solutions, driving execution excellence, and fostering a high-performance engineering culture that supports continuous delivery of customer value.
Organizational Context
The Product Development Manager operates within a cross-functional Agile environment where product delivery is executed through Scrum teams (squads). The role reports directly to the General Manager and works in close collaboration with Product Managers and the QA Manager to ensure seamless alignment between product strategy, engineering execution, and quality assurance.
The role provides oversight across multiple squads, each comprising developers, QA engineers, and a Scrum Master, while also leveraging architectural guidance from Solution Architects. It also collaborates indirectly with DevOps and Security functions, which reside under the Head of Operations, to ensure alignment on infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and compliance requirements.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic and Technical Leadership
The Product Development Manager is responsible for defining and executing the engineering strategy in alignment with organizational goals. This includes establishing technical direction, promoting modern engineering practices, and ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture standards. The role ensures that systems are designed for scalability, resilience, and maintainability, particularly within a financial services or enterprise software context where reliability and compliance are critical
Delivery and Execution Management
The role oversees end-to-end Product delivery across multiple Agile teams, ensuring that development activities are executed efficiently and within agreed timelines. This includes capacity planning, sprint oversight, dependency management, and risk mitigation. The Product Development Manager ensures that engineering output aligns with product priorities and that delivery commitments are consistently met.
Engineering Governance and Standards
The incumbent establishes and enforces engineering standards, including coding practices, code reviews, architectural compliance, and documentation requirements. The role ensures adherence to secure coding practices and supports compliance with regulatory and audit requirements, particularly in environments where data integrity and system security are paramount.
Collaboration and Stakeholder Engagement
The role works closely with Product Managers to refine requirements and ensure technical feasibility, and with the QA Manager to embed quality assurance throughout the development lifecycle. It also engages with architects to ensure alignment with long-term system design and interacts with operational teams to support deployment and production stability.
Continuous Improvement and Innovation
The Product Development Manager drives continuous improvement initiatives across engineering teams, including adoption of DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and automation. The role promotes a culture of innovation, encouraging the evaluation and adoption of new technologies, tools, and methodologies that enhance productivity and system performance.
Decision-Making Authority
The Product Development Manager has authority to make decisions regarding:
• Technical implementation approaches within defined architectural guidelines
• Allocation and management of engineering resources across teams
• Selection of development tools, frameworks, and practices within governance boundaries
• Prioritization of technical work such as refactoring and technical debt reduction
The role escalates decisions related to:
• Significant architectural changes or deviations from enterprise standards
• Major delivery risks impacting timelines or business outcomes
• Budgetary or strategic investment requirements
Problem Solving & Complexity
The role involves solving complex technical and organizational challenges that span multiple systems, teams, and stakeholders. This includes addressing scalability issues, managing cross-team dependencies, and balancing short-term delivery pressures with long-term architectural sustainability.
Problem-solving requires a high degree of analytical thinking, technical depth, and judgment, often in situations with incomplete information or evolving requirements.
The role must also navigate trade-offs between speed, quality, and cost while maintaining alignment with business priorities.
Knowledge, Skills & Qualifications
Education
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field
• A Master’s degree is an added advantage
Professional Certifications (Desirable)
• Agile/Scrum certifications (e.g., Certified Scrum Master, SAFe)
• Cloud or DevOps certifications (e.g., AWS, Azure, Kubernetes)
Technical and Functional Competencies
• Strong background in product architecture and system design
• Proficiency in modern programming frameworks and technologies
• Experience with microservices, APIs, and distributed systems
• Knowledge of DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud platforms
• Understanding of secure coding practices and compliance requirements
Behavioural Competencies
• Strong leadership and team management skills
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement
• Strategic thinking and decision-making capability
• Problem-solving and analytical skills
Experience Required
• Minimum of 8–12 years of experience in Product development
• At least 3–5 years in a leadership or management role
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments
• Experience in enterprise systems or financial services environments is highly desirable
Accountability & Performance Measures
The Product Development Manager is accountable for:
• Delivery Performance: Adherence to timelines, sprint predictability, and release commitments
• Quality Outcomes: Code quality, defect rates, and system stability
• System Performance: Scalability, availability, and reliability of applications
• Engineering Efficiency: Team productivity, cycle time, and deployment frequency
• Technical Health: Management of technical debt and adherence to architectural standards
• Team Effectiveness: Employee engagement, retention, and capability development
Stakeholder Interaction
Internal Stakeholders
• General Manager (strategic alignment and reporting)
• Product Managers (requirements and prioritization)
• QA Manager (quality assurance and testing alignment)
• Architects (design and standards governance)
• DevOps and Operations teams (deployment and infrastructure)
External Stakeholders
• Technology vendors and partners
• Auditors and regulatory bodies (where applicable)
Leadership & People Responsibilities
The Product Development Manager provides direct leadership to engineering teams, including senior developers, architects, and Scrum Masters. The role is responsible for performance management, coaching, mentoring, and career development of team members.
The incumbent is expected to build and sustain high-performing teams, foster a collaborative culture, and promote accountability, innovation, and continuous learning across the engineering function.
Working Environment & Methodology
The role operates within a dynamic Agile/Scrum environment, participating in and overseeing key ceremonies such as sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives. The Product Development Manager ensures effective cross-functional collaboration across squads and promotes adherence to Agile principles.
The role supports and drives the adoption of DevOps practices, including continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), automated testing, and infrastructure as code. The environment emphasizes rapid delivery, continuous feedback, and iterative improvement.
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