Head of Product – Merchant Solutions (SMME)

About the role

The Head of Product, Merchant Solutions (SMME) will define and drive the product strategy for Safaricom’s merchant payment ecosystem. You will build scalable tools for micro, small and medium merchants, lead a high‑performing product team and ensure strong commercial outcomes across Kenya.

Key responsibilities

• Define the merchant product vision, segmentation and multi‑year roadmap tied to commercial outcomes such as active merchants, usage, revenue and credit attach.
• Own the full merchant stack – acceptance channels, merchant apps, portals, notifications, reconciliation, business tools and value‑added services.
• Prioritise activation of existing features, run structured experiments on onboarding and engagement, and hold the team to measurable movement.
• Partner with financial services to design working‑capital and credit journeys that leverage transaction data.
• Drive a single merchant identity and common data model across products and markets.
• Set the evidence base by defining core merchant metrics, instrumenting journeys and making data‑driven roadmap decisions.

Required profile

• 10+ years of product management experience, with at least 4 years leading product teams or portfolios.
• Deep experience in mobile money, payments or fintech in Africa, preferably with merchant, SME or agent products at scale.
• Proven track record launching and growing products in Kenya or comparable East African markets with measurable commercial results.
• Strong grasp of merchant payments economics – acceptance, pricing, settlement, reconciliation and merchant lifecycle.
• Data fluency: comfortable defining metrics, working with analysts and SQL outputs, and designing experiments.
• Experience influencing across complex stakeholder environments without direct authority.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including presenting to senior executives.
• Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, engineering, computer science or related field.

Required skills

• SQL