Job Opportunities at One Acre Fund

Job Description

• Our Program Rotation Associate position is designed to develop new opportunities and fill temporary staffing gaps. Rotation projects smooth out short-term constraints to support continuous program growth
• Because you will have exposure to many different parts of the organization, this is an an excellent opportunity for an early-mid career professional to quickly grow into leaders at One Acre Fund.

Selected Program Rotation Associates will rotate through a series of field-based postings, followed by a permanent posting or further rotations depending on the candidate’s interests:

• First 12-24 months: Rotate between multiple ~6-month long posts
• Afterwards: Permanently fill a high priority role of interest for the candidate
• The role has a dual reporting structure:
• During your rotations you will report directly to a project manager
• You'll also have a constant dotted-line management relationship to the Program Rotation Manager for support and continuity of professional development.

Example Rotations Include:

• Field Operations: This team is the direct service provider to our farmers, building the capacity of our local staff to provide financially sustainable impact to all One Acre Fund farmers. A rotation with Field Operations could include managing training materials for 100,000+ farmers, designing incentives to ensure high repayment, or joining our crop health team to monitor field agricultural problems for our farmers.
• Business Operations: This team builds the necessary back-end to ensure that we fulfill our promises to our clients. This includes essential systems like transaction tracking, client data management, print, procurement, and investigations. A Business Operations rotation could include running bulk SMS service for 100,000+ farmers, piloting a new customer service line, or developing a farmer insurance system at scale
• Logistics: The primary responsibility of our Logistics team is to provide life-changing, high-quality inputs and materials to farmers on time for planting. A rotation with Logistics could include managing the seasonal delivery of inputs to thousands of farmers
• Program Innovations: This team's goal is to multiply One Acre Fund’s impact on the communities we serve by increasing the percent of households who join our program and improving the customer service we provide to those households. Example projects could include managing field tablet trials or piloting new projects like One Acre Fund-branded agro-dealers
• The Program Rotation team works with One Acre Fund's leadership to determine specific rotation projects and the eventual permanent role. We see this role as a way to develop future leaders in international development through exposure to a diverse set of organizational needs and a focus on professional development.

Career Growth and Development

• We have a culture of personal ownership, constant learning, and investment in developing our people. You’ll have weekly check-ins with your manager, access to mentorship and training programs, and regular feedback on your performance
• We hold career reviews every six months, and set aside time to discuss your aspirations and career goals. You will help shape a growing organization and build a rewarding long-term career.

Qualifications
We are looking for professionals with 2 to 5+ years of work experience, and a long-term commitment to our mission. Candidates who fit the following criteria are encouraged to apply:

• Minimum of a Bachelor's Degree with demonstrated previous work experience in challenging environments
• History of quickly producing impactful results at scale - low lag time from project start to delivering impact
• Desire to work in different geographic locations, in a field setting. For at least 12-18 months, multiple relocations around sub-Saharan Africa are expected and most rotations are field based
• Diverse work experiences. Experience in multiple departments or industries is a plus, as is successful entrepreneurial experience (e.g. leading a conference, starting a business, etc).
• Comfort with data analysis, able to work with data and make informed, evidence-based judgments
• Have at least one year demonstrated experience working in the developing world, although this is not a strict requirement.
• Language: English required, French a plus in Rwanda and Burundi. Swahili-speakers are particularly encouraged to apply.

Compensation

• Consistent with experience

Benefits

• Health insurance, housing, and comprehensive benefits

Sponsor International Candidates:

• Yes; must have existing rights to work in in the African continent

Note: One Acre Fund never asks candidates to pay any money or pay for tests at any stage of the interview process. Official One Acre Fund emails will always arrive from an @oneacrefund.org address. Please report any suspicious communication here: globalhotline@oneacrefund.org

The Roles

• One Acre Fund is growing quickly, and we plan to at least triple our farmer impact in the next five years
• This offers Program Associates a powerful career opportunity: learn from a successful field operation, contribute to aggressive growth, and make improvements to our program.

We are looking for Program Associates for a variety of teams within One Acre Fund, including:

Operations:

• Our country operation teams face the classic management challenge: how to keep a large country operation growing at 30-60% per year while also making improvements to our operating model. Program Associates learn from our organization’s deep knowledge on scaling rural field programs; then, they are challenged to find new ways to stretch, grow faster, and increase our quality of service.
• Field operations staff focus on farmer-facing services. Staff help to develop and manage performance of 500-3,000 field staff. Some roles are more general; others specialize in important moments like new site expansion, enrollment, and repayment.
• Support operations staff create the infrastructure for growth. These teams might operate and improve our deliveries to thousands of drop sites; enable mobile money integration in a country; or improve the flow of tens of millions of SMS and phone calls with farmers.

Innovations:

• Our Innovation teams discover new ideas for our programs and conduct dozens of trials to test these ideas.
• Product Innovations staff improve our core agricultural products or run new experiments in energy and health products. For example, our Product Innovations team is investigating delivery of live chickens and preparing the product for full-scale roll out.
• Program Design staff improve our core operating model. They test program model changes and analyze the resulting impact on customer satisfaction. Changes can include small shifts such as changing our loan structure, to more radical shifts like opening physical shops.

Daily, all roles involve a mix of activities:

• Understanding and solving problems: observing field operations, meeting with leaders of our field staff , running surveys, conducting desk research, analyzing performance indicators, etc. Then creating simple and lasting solutions to complex problems.
• Planning and executing large projects: identifying clear goals, creating project calendars, designing workflows, creating field tools and talking points, designing incentive systems, building buy-in across hundreds of staff, following up and monitoring project execution in the field, etc.
• Building teams: hiring staff using One Acre Fund’s unique “experiential hiring” system, mentoring deputies, and steadily handing off responsibility to your team as you build it.
• Communicating with other teams: working together with One Acre Fund’s other teams on the ground to provide a smooth customer experience in the simplest way possible.
• One Acre Fund has deep operational experience running rural field programs at scale. Program Associates benefit from the large size and experience of One Acre Fund, building skills through immersion in our operating environment. At the same time, Program Associates also serve on a small team-within-a-team, with autonomy to deliver results and improve operations.

Career Growth and Development

• You may report to a Program Manager (in larger operations) or the Country Director (in our smallest program countries). We have a culture of constant learning and we invest in developing our people
• You’ll have weekly check-ins with your manager, access to mentors and training programs, and regular feedback on your performance. We hold career reviews every six months, and set aside time to discuss your aspirations and career goals
• You can help shape a growing organization and build a rewarding long-term career.

Qualifications
We are looking for exceptional professionals with 2 to 5+ years of work experience, and a demonstrated long-term passion for our mission. Candidates who fit the following criteria are strongly encouraged to apply:

• Leadership experience at work, or outside of work.
• A willingness to commit to living in rural areas of East Africa for at least two years.
• Language: English required in all locations. French required for Burundi placement. Other notable and useful languages are Swahili, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Chichewa, Amharic.

Preferred Start Date

• Flexible. We hire for all roles on a rolling basis and don't make a hire until we find the right fit.

Compensation

• Based on experience

Benefits:

• Health insurance, housing, and comprehensive benefits

Sponsor International Candidates:

• Yes; Africans are strongly encouraged to apply.

Note

• One Acre Fund never asks candidates to pay any money or pay for tests at any stage of the interview process. Official One Acre Fund emails will always arrive from an @oneacrefund.org address. Please report any suspicious communication here: globalhotline@oneacrefund.org , but do not send applications or application materials to this email address.
• We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.