Samhita - Technical Program Manager

Organisation Overview (Samhita.org) :

Samhita is a social impact consulting firm, with a vision to build a 'better normal'. The better normal reimagines business environments where social value is an integral aspect of growth, putting stakeholders and environmental guardianship at the centre of business strategy, a strategy that evolves from inputs to outcomes, from individuals to ecosystem, and from delivering services to building capacity and enabling the market.

To do this, we support companies to align their core competencies with the needs of the social sector, and build catalytic partnerships with stakeholders with in-depth knowledge and networks to execute sustainable, outcome-oriented social impact initiatives. This approach bridges the gap between purpose and action, and forges business responsibility strategies that balance people, pro- t and planet, thereby creating a better normal for communities, environments and businesses.

Role Overview :

The use of technology for social impact is currently in the midst of a significant transformation, as corporate CSR teams, philanthropies, government, NGOs and other stakeholders realign their impact narrative and beneficiary engagement models to the power of digital. Therefore, the challenge we face at Samhita is how to compete as well as collaborate in with others to ensure a rapid action and response to emerging social challenges, and hence now are looking to modernize our technology in order to support expanded digitization of both the front and back ends of our business operations.

Furthermore, the current COVID-19 situation requires adoption of the right technology capabilities (e.g., remote delivery, continuous beneficiary touchpoints, data analytics) that can anticipate and prepare for the "next normal" (e.g., accelerated shift to digital channels for end-to-end social service delivery). Therefore, we are looking to hire a dynamic, self-starter that can work with us to achieve the following vision:

- Reimagine the role of technology to be a business and innovation partner

- Reinvent technology delivery to drive a step change in productivity and speed

- Future-proof the foundation by building flexible and secure platforms

The role requires to work with both our existing tech platform, as well as a planned new platform that can seamlessly bring together philanthropic donors, implementation agencies and beneficiaries to a unified e-marketplace for social impact that automates and supports the entire lifecycle of social impact programs - Program Design & Discovery, Donor & Implementation partner connect, Bidding & contracting, Payments, Beneficiary onboarding and management, Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Impact Assessment, as well as interfaces with other public and private systems in the social ecosystem.

We are hence looking for a Senior Technical Program Manager (TPM) to organize and drive strategic technology initiatives that help customers connect with our GoodCSR platform and GoodCSR business development team.

Your work will include developing the GoodCSR platform, spanning systems related to customer contact management and big data integration for CSR engagement. This is a dynamic role working directly with outsourced engineering and business partners. In this role, you will partner with (product) leadership to determine which platform elements have the highest impact and define goals to deliver these high impact elements to production.

You will be the leader for the platform's technology strategy working on complex cross-functional programs of work. You will need to anticipate (and de-risk) bottlenecks, manage escalations, make smart (data informed) tradeoff decisions, and balance the customer and business needs within our technical constraints. As a technology program owner for the platform, you're accountable for development of the applicable technology strategy, its execution, and the achievement of its key outcomes.

An ideal candidate will be entrepreneurial, innovative (both with technology and in getting things done), highly influential, and able to steer through ambiguity. They will love using technology to solve complex problems in a high-growth environment with a passionate and engaged team, have a strong product management mindset for building durable solutions to problems at scale, and be able to successfully advocate for the needs of our millions of customers around the world.

Work Location : Mumbai

Roles and Responsibilities :

- Define the mission, vision, and guiding principles for the platform; setting the objectives, analyzing the data to inform decisions, driving outcomes, and influencing the resourcing of your key initiatives to ensure they get done.

- Drive the creation of scalable, cross-cutting, solutions from concept to delivery with your cross-functional technology partners; you'll be able to zoom into the weeds of a solution or back out to the CEO-level to communicate constraints and target outcomes.

- Create plans that have clear, measurable success criteria, and clearly communicate progress, confidence, learnings, and results.

- Simplify complexity for the team, drive smart tradeoff decisions, and deliver incremental value for the initiative with many different product & engineering teams.

- Force multiply the efforts of many teams to deliver impact by removing bottlenecks for them before they become roadblocks, optimizing working models, and instrumenting repeatable processes.

- Own the prevention of traditional failures in outsourced teams: bad understanding of the customer/business problem, weak collaboration between teams, interdependencies not being mapped early and often, weak technical solutioning (debt), gaps in testing, or unclear success measurement.

- Communicate and align with senior leadership, both within Samhita and CGF. You will effectively paint with context, enable collaboration and alignment, and drive high quality decisions and execution.

Qualifications, Skills & Experience :

- 5+ years of experience in software engineering, software product management, software development management, or technical program management.

- A track-record of shipping complicated, cross-cutting, software solutions (products, systems, features) in an agile environment.

- A deep understanding of distributed systems and scalable solutions; you'll be expected to help contribute to the design and development of new platforms and capabilities with outsourced vendor partners.

- Understanding of the technical architecture of government systems in India (ERPs, Single Windows) especially from the perspective of data exchange and interfacing

- Ability to liaise with solution developers in order to both write business requirement specifications, as well as was work with the developer team to oversee product development end-to-end

- An entrepreneurial mindset, with a bias for customer focused innovation. You will need to bring the customer context into the team and understand things holistically that individual squads may miss.

- Excellent analytical skills with demonstrated experience turning data into actionable insights, clear opportunities, and viable solutions.

- The ability to communicate effectively at all levels in the organization, and manage outsourced vendors effectively.

- A Computer Science, Math, Engineering, or other technical degree is preferred (or relevant work experience).

- Candidates with relevant certifications like CISA would be preferred

Why Samhita?

- Make a big difference: Take, Own and implement.

- Leadership: This is the perfect opportunity to go beyond traditional roles and lead cutting edge Management and Research strategies. The candidate shall work alongside the brightest minds, in an environment that fosters growth and creativity

- Impact: Working with Samhita will provide you with an opportunity to bring about a positive change in the lives of millions

- Work Culture: Samhita has a team of young, hard-working, and dynamic individuals who strive for excellence while maintaining a humble outlook. Our work has been strengthened and supported by international and domestic donor agencies and foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Tata Trusts, GIZ, DFID, the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, UNDP and the Power of Nutrition.

- Learning: Increase your problem-solving capabilities by delving into complex challenges.