Technical Product Manager

ARCS; Gauteng; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Job summary

ARCS in South Africa seeks a Technical Product Manager to own the technical product function end-to-end, translating business and partner requirements into clear internal specs and an up-to-date backlog.

You will scope work with engineers, align with system architects, build a coherent product roadmap, and drive delivery across credit operations and other stakeholders, including post-deployment validation and QA sign-off.

Qualifications

• Honours degree or equivalent qualification.
• 3–5 years’ experience in a Product Management role.
• Ability to write clear, unambiguous functional specifications.
• Strong technical systems literacy, with the ability to understand architecture sufficiently to challenge scope, assess feasibility, and elevate meaningfully.
• Proven ability to influence without authority: securing delivery commitment from development teams and managing partner expectations without direct line control.
• Experience in data analysis, and the generation and presentation of key insights and reports.
• Experience working across partner or multi-stakeholder delivery environments.
• Prior experience in fintech, lending, or regulated financial products is advantageous

Responsibilities

• The Technical Product Manager owns the technical product function end to end. You are accountable for translating business and partner requirements into clear, detailed internal requirements and/or functional specifications, ensuring every piece of development work receives appropriate and timeous attention and is accurately reflected in a current backlog.
• You scope development work directly with engineers, breaking down requirements into deliverable units with clear acceptance criteria, and working closely with system architects on technical enhancements and developers on implementation. You align development team capacity with committed delivery windows, track progress, and proactively identify risks to schedule or scope.
• Working closely with the team, you identify system gaps, usability issues, and enhancement opportunities, translating operational feedback into prioritised development items. You consolidate priorities across internal business units, including credit, operations, and other functional stakeholders, into a coherent product roadmap, and contribute product and commercial insight to sales and marketing strategies aimed at growing disbursement volumes. You also manage ad hoc requests and analysis from customers and/or internal stakeholders.
• You own the end-to-end deployment process, including change control, release scheduling, UAT coordination, and post-deployment verification, aligning deployment cycles with customer readiness at both technical and business levels. You maintain a live deployment register and release calendar aligned with client change governance requirements and act as the go/no-go decision point for every production release.
• You coordinate technical incident resolution with the Tech Support team, taking ownership of solutioning once an incident has been logged and handed over by Product Operations. This includes contributing to defect tracking and bug prioritisation, producing structured incident write-ups and post-mortems covering root cause, business impact, and corrective actions, and developing runbooks for recurring failure patterns.
• You participate directly in PI planning cycles with the customer. You prepare and present technical delivery updates for weekly OPCO and Manco, covering active workstreams, open incidents, the deployment pipeline, and risk items. You also design and enhance comprehensive reporting structures across product and system support governance and data-driven decision-making.
• You own QA sign-off on completed development work before handover to Product Operations for final acceptance testing, defining and maintaining QA checklists and acceptance criteria to ensure delivery remains aligned with specifications.

Skills

Product management experience 3–5 yrs

Clear, unambiguous functional specs

Technical systems literacy

Influence without authority

Data analysis and insights

Cross-stakeholder delivery

Fintech exposure

Education

Honours degree or equivalent qualification

Job description

Education / Required Skills:

• Honours degree or equivalent qualification.
• 3–5 years’ experience in a Product Management role.
• Demonstrated ability to write clear, unambiguous functional specifications.
• Strong technical systems literacy, with the ability to understand architecture sufficiently to challenge scope, assess feasibility, and elevate meaningfully.
• Proven ability to influence without authority: securing delivery commitment from development teams and managing partner expectations without direct line control.
• Experience in data analysis, and the generation and presentation of key insights and reports.
• Experience working across partner or multi-stakeholder delivery environments.
• Prior experience in fintech, lending, or regulated financial products is advantageous

What You Will Own:

• The Technical Product Manager owns the technical product function end to end. You are accountable for translating business and partner requirements into clear, detailed internal requirements and/or functional specifications, ensuring every piece of development work receives appropriate and timeous attention and is accurately reflected in a current backlog.
• You scope development work directly with engineers, breaking down requirements into deliverable units with clear acceptance criteria, and working closely with system architects on technical enhancements and developers on implementation. You align development team capacity with committed delivery windows, track progress, and proactively identify risks to schedule or scope.
• Working closely with the team, you identify system gaps, usability issues, and enhancement opportunities, translating operational feedback into prioritised development items. You consolidate priorities across internal business units, including credit, operations, and other functional stakeholders, into a coherent product roadmap, and contribute product and commercial insight to sales and marketing strategies aimed at growing disbursement volumes. You also manage ad hoc requests and analysis from customers and/or internal stakeholders.
• You own the end-to-end deployment process, including change control, release scheduling, UAT coordination, and post-deployment verification, aligning deployment cycles with customer readiness at both technical and business levels. You maintain a live deployment register and release calendar aligned with client change governance requirements and act as the go/no-go decision point for every production release.
• You coordinate technical incident resolution with the Tech Support team, taking ownership of solutioning once an incident has been logged and handed over by Product Operations. This includes contributing to defect tracking and bug prioritisation, producing structured incident write-ups and post-mortems covering root cause, business impact, and corrective actions, and developing runbooks for recurring failure patterns.
• You participate directly in PI planning cycles with the customer. You prepare and present technical delivery updates for weekly OPCO and Manco, covering active workstreams, open incidents, the deployment pipeline, and risk items. You also design and enhance comprehensive reporting structures across product and system support governance and data-driven decision-making.
• You own QA sign-off on completed development work before handover to Product Operations for final acceptance testing, defining and maintaining QA checklists and acceptance criteria to ensure delivery remains aligned with specifications.