The posting
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Jackfruit Finance lends to the people who educate a continent. We provide working capital, project, and asset finance to low-fee private schools, the schools that teach the children with the fewest alternatives and that formal credit markets will not touch.
Since inception, we have financed 1,022 schools and 72 SMEs across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, reaching 305,265 children and 13,004 teachers, and 70.3% of the school directors we back are women. We financed our 1,000th school this year.
We are scaling on three fronts at once:
- Geographically: we now operate across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
- Into new products: a gender-lens SME book and health-facility lending, because a school is the most reliable node in its community’s economy and the natural conduit into it.
- And in how we work: we are live on Musoni as our core banking platform, we run a growing set of AI agents and automations across origination, credit, and operations, and people across the company are increasingly building their own tools with AI.
With $12m of lending, a 98% collections rate, and a field force operating in places most lenders will not go, we have the data to make that real. Come help us continue to grow!
ABOUT THE ROLE
Jackfruit’s competitive advantage is that we can underwrite a school no one else will lend to. That advantage lives in our data and in the systems that collect it: what our school support leads see in the field, what schools tell us about enrollment and fee collection, and how those signals translate into a credit decision and a repayment schedule that a school can actually meet. Data is not a back-office function at Jackfruit; it is the machinery of the lending business itself. We are building on this towards a truly Regenerative Lending approach (see here).
The foundations are now in place. Our core banking migration is done, and Musoni is the system of record. Much of the lending workflow already has automation in it: an AI credit agent, credit scoring, KYC checks, contract and document generation, repayment schedule generation, and customer SMS. And AI has changed who can build: staff in credit, finance, operations, and the field can now create useful tools themselves, and we want more of that, not less.
What we do not yet have is one person who makes it all work as a single system. Some of what exists is good but needs to be more reliable. Some tools were built and are not implemented. Some do not connect to each other or to the same data. This role exists to fix that. You will be the central owner of Jackfruit’s data, systems, and AI: the person who ensures the data is accurate and flowing, the systems are safeguarded and controlled, AI is used as efficiently as possible, and everything that gets built connects to everything else and actually gets used.
This is a hands-on, delivery-focused role, not a strategy seat. You will build yourself, you will enable others to build well, and you will decide what does and does not belong in the stack. You will manage our small technology team and work directly with the CEO. The test of this role is simple: the CEO should be able to stop thinking about technology, trust that the numbers are real, and see a lending operation that gets faster and more accurate every quarter without a proportional increase in headcount.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
1. Own AI across the company.
- Set how Jackfruit uses AI and run the platform it sits on. Decide which tools and models we use, manage cost, and make sure every agent and automation has an owner, clear permissions, human gates where needed, run logging, and a measurable purpose. Build and ship agents yourself.
2. Enable more people to build safely.
- We want staff across the company building tools with AI. Give them the standards, templates, data access, training, and review path to do it well, and be the central point of control: nothing goes into production without connecting to the right data, meeting security standards, and having a user who will actually use it. Retire what is not used.
3. Lead the automation of our lending process with AI end to end.
- Own the automation of the process flows that make a lending company work, including but not limited to lead qualification, KYC, credit assessment and credit scoring, investment committee memos, contract and security documentation generation, repayment schedule generation, disbursement, payment posting, customer communications, collections, portfolio monitoring, and credit bureau and regulatory reporting. Much of this is already in place but not yet perfect. Your job is to refine each piece, measure it against real outcomes, and bring the pieces together into one connected flow. This involves building AI agents and ML tools.
4. Own customer-facing AI agents.
- Own, build, and improve AI-powered systems that are customer-facing, including agents that enable customers to apply for loans and receive customer support, marketing, and other interactions through AI agents.
5. Own the data and the single source of truth.
- Ensure data is accurate at the point of entry and flows cleanly between systems. Maintain one authoritative source for every key metric, make sure portfolio numbers reconcile everywhere, keep the data documentation (diagrams, dictionaries) current, and run the dashboards leadership relies on. AI is only as good as the data underneath it, and that data is yours.
6. Own the core banking platform and core systems.
- Musoni is live as our system of record. Own it on an ongoing basis: correct usage, accurate data, product configuration and change control, vendor management, and clean integration with the CRM and the SSL app. Retire the remaining legacy tools it replaces. Build new tools on top of it for new automations.
7. Own the SSL app.
- The School Support Lead (SSL) app is how Jackfruit and the school support leads in the field talk to each other, and it works well today. Own its roadmap, spend time with the field team to understand what they need, and keep it connected to Musoni and the wider data flow so field activity and loan data stay together.
8. Drive delivery and ruthless prioritization.
- Maintain a tight roadmap, run quarterly planning, sprints, and standups, and drive work to completion rather than leaving a trail of half-finished projects. Give the CEO and the leadership team clear, ongoing visibility into status, priorities, and tradeoffs, and gatekeep what does and does not get built.
9. Safeguard the systems.
- As a regulated lender, Jackfruit has to get security, compliance, and audit right. Own access control, backups, secrets, audit logs, data protection, and IT audits with regulators and other stakeholders, and extend the same discipline to every AI agent and staff-built tool.
10. Manage the technology team.
- Directly manage a small team covering engineering, data, and IT support. Prioritize their work, unblock them, and own their reviews and growth. The team will stay small. This includes oversight of the IT help desk, ensuring issues are triaged and resolved through a well-run process.
WHO YOU ARE
- You take it personally that things get done and that they get used.
- You prioritize ruthlessly; you can get everyone from the CEO to the developers focused on the single most important thing, and you roll up your sleeves to ship rather than waiting for someone else to.
- You are a builder who likes making other people builders: you would rather give a credit officer the tools and guardrails to solve their own problem than add it to a queue.
- You communicate exceptionally well in both directions: you give leadership true, clear visibility into what is happening, and you understand what non-technical users actually need.
- You pull your own numbers in SQL, you build with AI coding tools every day, and you can read and review what others ship. Nobody can sell you a story about why something is hard.
WHAT YOU HAVE
- AI fluency with production results. You have built and shipped AI agents and automations that real teams use every day, and you can show the before and after. You know how to evaluate an agent against real outcomes, control its cost, and put the right guardrails and human checks around it. This is a builder’s track record, not a point of view about AI.
- Ownership of system-of-record. Previous experience owning a system-of-record and ensuring it is accurate and well-functioning.
- Experience governing a stack that many people build on. You have set standards, access controls, and review processes that let non-engineers build safely, and you have kept a growing set of tools connected, documented, and used rather than sprawling.
- A deep understanding of loan products and lending operations. Five or more years in lending, microfinance, or other relevant financial services. You know how origination, credit assessment, documentation, disbursement, repayments, collections, and portfolio metrics (PAR, outstanding) actually work, and how the parts of a lending business connect. You have automated or materially improved these flows before.
- Hands-on data fluency. You independently write SQL to pull and reconcile numbers. You can design a clean, simple data model, own the integrity of data flowing between a core banking system and the tools around it, and establish a single source of truth by personally getting into the data. Experience with a core banking platform (Musoni or similar) is a strong plus.
- A security and controls mindset. You have owned access, audit, and data protection in a regulated or audited environment, and you build controls in from the start rather than after an incident.
- Emerging markets experience. You have operated in an emerging markets context and understand its realities.
WHAT WE OFFER
- Flexible and remote working: This is a remote role open to candidates anywhere in the world who can work East African hours. Nairobi-based staff work a hybrid model with office days on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
- Competitive compensation: We provide a fair and equitable pay system, benchmarked against market standards, role-specific qualifications, and performance.
- Comprehensive health insurance: We offer 100% medical insurance coverage for employees, with 50% coverage available for eligible dependents (spouses under 65 and children up to 18, or up to 25 if in school).
- Paid new parent leave: We support growing families with 3 calendar months of fully paid maternity leave and 14 days of fully paid paternity leave.
- Annual leave: We provide a generous allowance of 21 days of paid annual leave per year.
- Learning and development: We are committed to your professional growth and provide access to training opportunities, with potential sponsorship available based on individual and departmental development needs.
