Associate PM at Lifecheq – Fintech Career Growth Role in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Career Stage Fit: This is an Associate PM role — ideal for early-career professionals transitioning from consulting, business analysis, or operations into product management. The emphasis on execution over strategy signals this is a hands-on learning environment with direct mentorship from a Group PM.
Skills You'll Build:
- End-to-end experiment design and data pipeline management — highly transferable to growth PM and data PM roles.
- Stakeholder communication with C-suite executives — rare exposure at the associate level.
- Fintech and emerging markets domain expertise — increasingly valued as APAC and Africa fintech scales.
- Backlog grooming, acceptance criteria writing, and cross-functional delivery coordination.
Compensation Context: Salary is described as "market-competitive" but not disclosed. South African APM salaries typically range ZAR 380K–580K annually. If you're based outside South Africa, ensure you clarify whether compensation is pegged to local or global rates — this matters significantly.
Culture Signals: Lifecheq reads as a high-growth scale-up (8,000+ advisers, expanding to Southeast Asia, backed by notable investors). Expect fast pace, ownership culture, and direct exposure to impact — but also ambiguity and evolving processes typical of a Series A/B stage company.
Green Flags: Explicit async culture, mission with measurable social impact, exposure to senior executives early, and an expanding geographic footprint that creates internal mobility options. Watch for: lack of salary transparency and the expectation to present to listed-company execs within 90 days — set clear onboarding expectations upfront.
Headquarters: Western Cape, Cape Town, 8000 South Africa
About Lifecheq
Lifecheq is transforming financial advice and insurance distribution across emerging markets through our cutting-edge technology platform. As Africa's largest advice platform, we empower over 8,000 financial advisers to deliver holistic, personalised financial planning to the underserved mass affluent market.
Our holistic financial advice platform has achieved remarkable results in driving record adviser productivity for our partners. Backed by leading investors, we're expanding across Africa and Southeast Asia – with a mission to create one million sustainable middle-income jobs for financial advisers.
The Opportunity
Own the execution of initiatives that drive adviser productivity — moving more advisers from the mid band into the productive band, and keeping productive advisers there.
What You'll Do
- Work with your Group Product Manager to translate product strategy and experiment priorities into well-scoped tickets, timelines, and delivered features.
- Develop and maintain a deep understanding of the adviser productivity funnel — know how many advisers are in each band, what is moving them up, and where they are getting stuck.
- Develop and maintain a view of your key metrics and build instrumentation into the products you manage so you have an ongoing view of performance; know when a number looks wrong before it is flagged to you.
- Gather ongoing feedback from advisers and managers directly; build the observational habits to understand where the pipeline is failing and bring findings to the Group PM with a point of view, not just a summary.
- Own the alert and nudge pipeline end to end — template creation, regulatory approval submissions, staging tests, production deployment, and delivery quality — ensuring advisers receive the right recommendations reliably.
- Manage rollout logistics for new features: determine sequencing, verify adviser access across branches and regions, and troubleshoot activation issues.
- Set up experiment infrastructure as directed by the Group PM — cohort assignment, data feeds, template creation, tracking configuration — and take responsibility for data quality and delivery reliability throughout the experiment window.
- Compile clean experiment data packages for the Group PM to analyse and interpret; manage the operational handoff when successful experiments move to production.
- Work with lead engineers to coordinate delivery sequencing, dependencies, and deployment schedules; maintain a well-groomed backlog with clear acceptance criteria and flag risks early with a proposed solution attached.
- Take responsibility for the business outcomes of the initiatives you run: if adviser productivity is not moving, understand why and bring a plan to address it.
- Ensure automated reports are accurate and distributed reliably; maintain product analytics dashboards and coordinate data logistics with external partners.
What We're Looking For
- A four-year degree or equivalent.
- Analytical, data-driven, critical thinking skills — able to unpack a problem clearly, develop and communicate hypotheses, frame experiments and test them rigorously.
- Some exposure to a commercial or customer-facing role; very open to interacting with customers and financial advisers regularly, and passionate about using technology to solve problems.
- Strong communication skills with team members and stakeholders on deliverables and approach, with good grounding in effective written communication in a technical context.
- A drive for success, keenness to learn and develop, collaborative can-do attitude, and ability to build positive relationships.
- Business acumen and a grasp of the key concepts of how a business makes money, with a desire to see your work make a tangible business impact.
- Comfort engaging with senior executives at large and small companies — you'd be okay presenting to execs at a listed company within your first three months.
What We Offer
- A market-competitive salary.
- A collaborative, mission-driven environment with exposure to cutting-edge fintech initiatives.
- Opportunities to work on impactful projects with leading partners and stakeholders.
- Career growth within a rapidly scaling organisation.
- The chance to help shape the future of financial services delivery.
- We're a remote-first business, with a setup that optimises for async work.
To apply: https://weworkremotely.com/remote-jobs/lifecheq-associate-product-manager-remote
Frequently Asked Questions
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