Description:

Role Overview:

Tabiya seeks a Head of Product & Technical Strategy to lead the productization of our digital public goods for youth employment in low- and middle-income countries. Our current suite includes our Inclusive Skills Taxonomy (skills and occupations mapping based on ESCO), Classifier (NLP tool for unstructured descriptions of economic opportunities), Compass (AI-powered skills exploration and guidance for jobseekers), and Horizon (matching and analytics engine).

This is a unique opportunity for an emerging technical leader to transform these components into accessible, well-documented products that reach the organizations that need them most. You will bridge technical execution and organizational strategy, ensuring our suite of open-source tools becomes mission-aligned, adoption-ready infrastructure.

About Tabiya:

- Tabiya builds open-source software and standards to unlock economic opportunity for all.

- Originating from the University of Oxford, we partner with government employment services, NGOs, and job platforms to create pathways that recognize skills from all workincluding informal and traditionally unseen activities. Our mission is to make labor markets more efficient, equitable, and inclusive.

- We're a two-year-old non-profit organization operating at the intersection of digital public infrastructure, AI, and global development. Our initial work in Sub-Saharan Africa (South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia) has expanded to Latin America, with active exploration in additional geographies.

- We were selected for the inaugural Google.org GenAI accelerator, recognizing our approach to AIpowered employment tools for low- and middle-income countries.

- Our team of approximately 10 people operates globally with flat hierarchies and a bias toward action. We work with academic rigor but without the bureaucracy: we evaluate our work systematically, take seriously the safety and equity implications of AI tools for vulnerable populations, measure impact rigorously, and collaborate with researchers on evaluation and theoryall while staying focused on shipping tools that work in the real world.

- We maintain close partnerships with implementing organizations like government ministries, the World Bank, and non-profit organizations. We work as a technical partner to help improve their work, not external consultants.

Primary Responsibilities:

Product Strategy & Execution (50%):

- Lead productization efforts to transform existing technical components into usable, well documented solutions

- Define and execute product roadmap that aligns technical capabilities with organizational mission and partner needs

- Oversee integration of our Inclusive Livelihoods Taxonomy, Classifier, Compass, and Horizon into coherent product offerings

- Establish standards for accessibility, documentation, and API design that enable broad adoption across diverse low- and middle-income country (LMIC) markets

- Translate organizational strategy into technical execution plans and vice versa

Technical Leadership & Orchestration (50%):

- Orchestrate technical development work across in-house tech team, contractors, partners, and other internal team members

- Provide technical oversight and product architecture guidance to the Tabiya team in fundraising and partnership development efforts

- Make strategic build vs. partner decisions that optimize for mission impact, resource constraints

- Ensure technical decisions support long-term sustainability, scalability and community engagement

- Build and maintain relationships with technology development and implementation partners and the broader DPI ecosystem

Required Qualifications:

- 10 to 15 years of technical experience in product management or product strategy development with demonstrated progression toward leadership

- Strong product thinking: ability to translate technical capabilities into user-facing solutions

- Demonstrable experience in shipping and scaling products across diverse markets/user bases

- Experience with open-source software development and/or digital public infrastructure

- Proven ability to operate at both strategic and technical levels

- Excellent communication skills; can explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders

- Understanding of, or strong interest in, the global development ecosystem and LMIC contexts

Desired Qualifications:

- Experience in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, or other Global South contexts

- Familiarity with AI/ML tools, particularly NLP and matching algorithms

- Background in labor market systems, employment services, or related social impact domains

- Experience working with mission-driven organizations or social enterprises

- Comfort with ambiguity and ability to bring vision to solving complex problems

What We Offer:

- Leadership at an inflection point: Join as a core member of the leadership team with direct influence on organizational direction. You'll shape product strategy as we transition from building foundational tools to scaling adoption across diverse contexts and geographies.

- Mission-critical impact with measurable outcomes: Shape how AI-powered labor market tools reach millions of young people across low- and middle-income countries, working on digital public infrastructure that matters. Your work will be directly measurable through partner adoption and RCT evidence of employment outcomes.

- High autonomy in a flat, mission-driven environment: Work remotely with a global team where your decisions directly shape product direction and technical strategy.

Timeline & Process:

- Rolling review: We're committed to finding the right person and will review applications on a rolling basis rather than working to a fixed deadline

- Interview process: Conversations with the current leadership team, with final approval by our advisory board

- Start date: Flexible within 3-6 months

- Trial period: Initial 2-3 months focused on a specific productization challenge, rolling to permanent position with long-term runway upon successful trial