Manager – Credit Strategy & Operations Job Apollo Agriculture, Nairobi, Kenya
Apollo Agriculture, Nairobi, Kenya
Job description
About the Role
We are looking for a versatile, high-ownership problem solver to own Apollo’s acquisition credit engine — how we decide which farmers to serve and on what terms, and how we keep that engine profitable and protected from fraud as we scale across markets. As more of our routine credit operations get automated, the role concentrates on the harder problems: framing decisions, bringing the analysis and a clear recommendation, aligning teams, and owning execution and results — setting direction together with credit leadership. What matters most is how you work: deep collaboration, clear communication, first-principles thinking, and genuine curiosity about our customers and our business.
Key Responsibilities
- Own acquisition credit strategy end-to-end: who we approve, how much credit they get, how it is priced, how the product is structured, and the expected profitability of those decisions.
- Be a thought partner: collaborate closely with Product, Commercial, Growth, Engineering, and Finance to keep credit strategy aligned with business milestones — and go beyond credit: elevate good ideas, push back with data and align on facts, and take on hard operational problems across the business.
- Build and run the monitoring and learning loop: dashboards, controls, and automated triggers that show how policies and the portfolio are performing; experiments and impact assessments; and timely corrective action when performance deviates from plan.
- Lead fraud and data verification strategy and ops team:the rules and detection processes that stop fraud at acquisition, and the day-to-day running of the team — SOPs, incentives, performance management, and quality.
- Spend regular time in the field: meet farmers, agrodealers, field officers, and verification agents to understand their challenges first-hand, and use those insights to improve Apollo’s credit offering.
- Coach and develop the team: build accountability, resilience, and future leaders within the function.
- Be AI-first in your workflows: use AI wherever it cuts turnaround times, automates repetitive work, or improves quality.
Your responsibilities will evolve as Apollo grows, and this role will suit someone who is comfortable with frequent change.
Qualifications
The ideal candidate is a versatile generalist — a strong problem solver, communicator, and collaborator — with the analytical rigor to own credit decisions, and genuine motivation for Apollo’s mission of serving small-scale farmers. We welcome strong candidates from a range of backgrounds, including credit, strategy, analytics, product, and consulting.
- 4–7 years of experience in credit, risk, strategy, analytics, or product roles, ideally within financial services or consulting — including exposure to credit or lending risk: you understand how lending economics work (risk, pricing, portfolio performance).
- Structured, first-principles problem solving, with a track record of turning ambiguous business problems into shipped policies.
- Exceptional analytical ability, including SQL and dashboard tools — able to read through data, extract the hidden insights, and visualize them in ways most people cannot.
- Experience collaborating deeply across functions, influencing without formal authority, and leading and developing teams in fast-paced, high-growth environments.
- Strong communication skills: shares thinking with clarity in writing and in person, aligns people on facts, and constructively challenges the status quo.
- Real appetite for time in the field with the farmers we serve — based in Nairobi or willing to travel extensively to Apollo’s markets.
- Hands-on experience with AI tools and AI-assisted workflows.
- A degree in a quantitative or analytical discipline such as engineering, statistics, mathematics, or economics.
- Direct experience designing and optimizing credit policies (approve/decline, limit assignment, pricing) or fraud frameworks is a strong plus.
You don’t need to tick every box — if most of this sounds like you, we’d like to hear from you!