Product Manager Fellow (1 year contract)

Location: Remote | Sub-Saharan Africa & South Asia Department: Engineering Employment Type: Contract Location Type: Remote

About The Agency Fund

The Agency Fund (TAF) is a US non-profit funder-doer that builds projects to expand human agency at scale. We embed engineers and product managers directly inside evidence-based nonprofits across East Africa, South Asia, and beyond — helping them build data infrastructure, run experiments, and scale impact through automation and product thinking. Our small, global team combines expertise in software, AI, social psychology, and development economics, and our community of 200+ partner organizations reaches millions of people annually.

We're an entrepreneurial team that operates with minimal hierarchy - everyone contributes to a shared mission in unique ways.

About the Fellowship

This is a 12-month fellowship (part of TAF's Lighthouse Fellows program), not a permanent role at TAF. You will work with two partner nonprofits over the year as an embedded product manager, one after the other or overlapping depending on partner needs, supported and mentored by a senior TAF colleague. The goal is that by the end of the year, you and one of them know each other well enough that you join them permanently (or, if that is not the right match, another organization in the social sector, with our help). A permanent offer depends on mutual fit and on the partner's own hiring decision. It is not guaranteed.

This fellowship is for people who want to work closer to the problem than most tech jobs allow, and who want a structured year to find the right organization to commit to.

The Role

You will be embedded in each partner nonprofit as its product counterpart, working alongside a senior TAF colleague who mentors and supports you. You will sit with the partner's program teams, learn how their services actually reach people, and turn that into a clear product roadmap. You will work with TAF engineers, who write and ship production code. As the year goes on, you take on more of the discovery, prioritization and partner relationship yourself.

You will prototype solutions yourself, such as dashboards, product analytics, mockups, randomized experiments and feature design, so that decisions are made on something real. You will not be expected to write production-grade code.

What You'll Do

Be the day-to-day product counterpart to your host organizations' leadership and program teams, building trust through regular in-person and remote time with them

Run structured discovery: interview staff and the people they serve, shadow field operations, and write down the real problem rather than the stated one

Turn what you learn into a prioritized roadmap and clear requirements the engineers can act on

Prototype solutions: dashboards, product analytics, mockups, randomized experiments, feature design and prototypes

Design and run small experiments (A/B tests, pilots) with the partner and help them read the results

Run lightweight agile cycles with the engineers: backlog, sprint planning, and retrospectives

Coach partner staff on product practice, so the capability stays after you do

Report what you learn back to TAF so lessons from your placement reach other partners and the wider sector

In the final quarter, work with TAF and the host organization you are most likely to join to define the permanent role you would take on there

Who You Are

You might be a great fit if you

Have 2-5 years of experience in product management, solutions engineering, consulting or a similar client-facing technical role

Have worked directly with customers (forward deployed PM, solutions engineer, customer support or similar), not only with internal teams

Have a track record of making decisions based on data. You have designed and prototyped features through user research, built dashboards, run ad-hoc product analytics, randomized experiments and AB tests.

Have a track record of deploying AI solutions to production.

Can read and write SQL, and can prototype a simple dashboard or analysis to make a point

Are comfortable with agile ways of working and can explain trade-offs to engineers and to non-technical program directors.

Communicate clearly in writing and in conversation, and work well with significant autonomy while staying connected to a distributed team

Are curious about global development and are open to committing to one organization at the end of the year

Are based in sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia

What Success Looks LikeAt 90 days

You understand your first host organization's work well enough to explain its biggest product problem to an outsider

You have a first prototype or experiment in front of the team

At 12 months

A host organization has a working product roadmap, and at least one improvement you scoped has shipped and been measured.

Partner staff can run the product process without you.

You and a host organization have agreed what a permanent role looks like, or you have a clear view of the next-best fit.

Why Join Us

A structured year inside a mission-driven organization, with a senior mentor at TAF

Real responsibility with a safety net: you work inside a partner from the first month, with a senior TAF colleague alongside you

A path into a permanent role with an organization you have already worked with

Time inside more than one partner organization before you commit, so you choose with more information

Fully remote and flexible, with periodic travel to partner sites and team onsites

Compensation details are shared during the interview process

Location and engagement

Remote, embedded day-to-day with your host organizations' teams, with periodic in-person visits to partner sites

Fixed-term contractor engagement for 12 months