Product Manager (Promotions)

The Takealot Group, a dominant force in South Africa's e-commerce landscape, is seeking a strategic Product Manager to spearhead advancements within its Promotions division. This pivotal role, based in Cape Town, focuses on shaping and implementing a product roadmap designed to invigorate commercial growth through the development of superior promotional functionalities across the business.

About the Promising Opportunity

This position offers a unique chance to influence the direction of promotional strategies within one of the country's largest online retailers. The successful candidate will immerse themselves in the intricacies of the Promotions division, gaining a comprehensive understanding of its strategic goals, operational workflows, existing technological infrastructure, and relevant industry benchmarks. A core aspect of the role involves close collaboration with the Promotions Product Lead, working in tandem to establish and nurture a product roadmap. This roadmap will be instrumental in guiding technical developments crucial for the division to achieve its ambitious strategic objectives.

Success will be measured rigorously, with a strong emphasis placed on tracking key performance indicators. The Product Manager will not only monitor these metrics but also take proactive ownership in driving improvements. This will involve identifying opportunities and prioritising projects that will have the most significant positive impact on the roadmap's outcomes.

What You'll Be Doing

The scope of responsibilities for this Product Manager role is broad, encompassing strategic definition, project execution, and stakeholder management. Key activities include:

• Defining the strategic business requirements for technical systems development, ensuring these align with prioritised projects on the Product Roadmap. Data-driven insights will be paramount to support all decision-making processes.
• Translating these business requirements into actionable functional and technical IT user stories and detailed project specifications. A phased approach to project delivery will be employed to ensure that each stage yields immediate business benefits.
• Overseeing projects from conception to completion, managing the entire product development lifecycle. This includes setting realistic timelines, driving project schedules, leading cross-functional development teams from the initial design stages all the way through to release, and orchestrating successful production launches.
• Managing all stakeholder communications effectively. This involves ensuring that all relevant parties provide essential input on the prioritisation of the Product Roadmap and providing clear updates on its execution.
• Maintaining and prioritising the engineering backlog through effective sprint planning and prioritisation techniques.

What They're Looking For

The ideal candidate will possess a robust blend of commercial acumen, analytical prowess, and technical understanding. While specific years of experience aren't detailed, the emphasis is on a proven ability to deliver results in a high-paced, growth-oriented environment.

Essential qualities and experience include:

• Demonstrable strong commercial understanding, coupled with keen analytical capabilities. Proficiency in SQL for data extraction and analysis is crucial, enabling the effective use of insights to guide strategic decisions.
• A highly structured thinking process with meticulous attention to detail.
• A solid technical understanding and prior experience with the software development process.
• Exceptional project management and communication skills, enabling effective collaboration and leadership of cross-functional teams, particularly with engineering counterparts, to ensure projects are delivered on time and to specification.
• A flexible and adaptable mindset, crucial for navigating a dynamic, hyper-growth organisation.
• Previous experience with projects focused on system scalability and automation.
• The capability to balance rapid business expansion with the maintenance of robust compliance and quality control mechanisms.

In South Africa, a Product Manager role of this nature, especially within a leading e-commerce company like Takealot, typically commands a competitive salary, often ranging from R600,000 to well over R1,000,000 annually, depending heavily on experience and the specific scope of responsibilities. Such positions offer excellent career progression, often leading to senior product management roles or leadership positions within the wider business. The skills and experience gained are highly transferable across various technology and retail sectors in the South African market.

• A proven track record of delivering results, in a fast-paced environment.
• Demonstrates strong commercial acumen with analytical capabilities, proficient in SQL for obtaining and analysing data, and effectively leverages insights to drive informed decision-making.
• Highly structured thinker with strong attention to detail.
• Strong technical understanding & experience with the development process.
• Strong project management and communication skills – able to effectively manage cross-functional stakeholders (in particular the engineering team) to ensure projects are delivered according to specifications on time.
• A flexible and adaptable mindset.
• Proven experience with system scalability and automation projects.
• Ability to balance rapid growth with robust compliance and quality control mechanisms.