Who We Are!
🌍 Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population. By 2035, the continent is poised to contribute more young people to the global workforce each year than the rest of the world combined.
At Educate! we're obsessed with impact. We leverage iterative learning to build highly scalable youth employment solutions aimed at unlocking the potential of the world’s youngest continent.
Educate! prepares youth in Africa to learn, earn and thrive in today’s economy by:
- Introducing an employment-focused school subject into secondary and
- Delivering livelihood boot camps for out-of-school youth, with a focus on marginalized rural girls and young women.
To date, more than 500,000 youth have been meaningfully impacted across Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and along the way, Educate! has become the largest youth employment and skills provider in East Africa.
Educate! is a team of over 300 largely African staff and 300 volunteer youth mentors. We prioritize building an engaging, fulfilling and growth oriented work environment. 50% of our top 30 leaders have been with us for over 5 years, 10+ alumni have started their own organizations, and 6 current or former team members were Acumen Fund East Africa fellows.
We have been backed by top foundations such as Imaginable Futures, Livelihood Impact Fund, Jack Dorsey’s #startsmall, CIFF and Echidna Giving. Educate! won a 2018 Klaus J. Jacobs Prize and a 2015 WISE Award, and has been highlighted by the World Bank’s S4YE's Impact Portfolio, an Al Jazeera documentary, BBC, The Brookings Institution as one of 14 case studies on scaling education, and the Gates Foundation as a Goalkeepers Accelerator. In 2022, we received a catalytic investment from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott to scale our systems change work.
Educate!'s long-term vision is to design solutions that measurably impact millions of youth across Africa each year.
Good to note: To Our Awesome Applicants! 🚀💫
We know that incredible candidates sometimes hesitate to apply if they don’t meet every requirement. If this role excites you, we encourage you to apply!
We’re looking for passionate individuals who believe in our mission and can bring unique perspectives to our team—not just those who check every box. We value diversity and strongly encourage women and individuals from all backgrounds to apply.
Position Overview
Educate!, the largest youth skills service provider in East Africa is looking for a Global Systems and Financial Operations Manager who finds manual, repetitive tasks offensive and has the drive to build the architectures that replace them. You will own global internal operations (operational infrastructure, finance coordination, compliance tracking, etc.) while designing and implementing smarter systems and AI-enabled processes. You’ll roll up your sleeves to manage daily logistics like paying bills and reconciling expenses, but your true mandate is to build the machine that does the work. You will leverage AI, low-code tools, and effective delegation to make operational tasks faster, smarter, and more effective. This is a role for a builder who loves taking messy, undefined problems and turning them into clear, actionable playbooks.
What You’ll Do🌟
System Architecture and Automation (40%)
- Workflow Design: Identify operational pain points and lead the charge in redesigning these workflows to be faster, simpler, and more effective
- AI & Low-Code Building: Lead the implementation of AI agents and low-code solutions (e.g. n8n, Zapier) to increase efficiency and scalability
- Operational Infrastructure: Ensuring global infrastructure (office procurement, physical mail, etc.) can run on autopilot with minimal executive oversight
- Scalability Audits: Conduct regular complexity audits to purge redundant SOPs and legacy systems, ensuring our tech stack remains lean, integrated, and high-performing
Financial Systems Building and Integrity (35%)
- Accounts Payable Optimization: Own the end-to-end Accounts Payable architecture. Implement automated coding and approval routing to ensure accuracy and compliance
- CRM-to-Finance Integration: Architect the logic that keeps CRM donor records perfectly synced with bank deposits
- Strategic Governance: Design the tracking systems and dashboards that keep the global finance team on schedule, ensuring deadlines are met through system-driven triggers
- Team Upskilling & QC: Transition the finance team from "execution" to "audit” by training them to perform high-level Quality Control on automated outputs and ensuring they have the technical literacy to manage an AI-augmented stack
Special Projects and Executive Support (25%)
- Strategic Leadership Support: Drive complex non-routine projects for the executive leadership team to streamline operational efficiency
- Virtual Assistant (VA) Optimization: Treat our VA team as a scalable resource, by helping design the workflows they follow, setting KPIs for their success, and managing their output
- Cross-Functional Efficiency: Identify opportunities where internal efficiency is lagging and deploy rapid-response systems or automation to bridge the gap.
Who You Are 🦸‍♀️🦸‍♂️
- You are proactive in identifying and prioritizing improvement opportunities through listening to team needs and spotting pain points
- You’re excited to experiment with automation tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Gemini, Zapier, Google Workspace integrations) and view AI as a core component of modern operational excellence
- You’re able to organize data, build formulas, and use spreadsheets to streamline operations
- You are a natural teacher who can translate technical complexity into user-friendly tools, bringing the rest of the team along and upskilling them to manage these systems independently.
- You have an undergraduate degree and 3–5 years work experience in Operations, Systems Management, or a high-level Administrative role where you didn't just follow processes, you built them.
- You resonate with our Five Cultural Tenets (see What is Educate! About? below) and learn more by looking at Educate!’s culture deck here
What We Offer 
- A vibrant, mission-driven environment with a supportive and fun team.
- Flexibility - Fully remote or hybrid work environment (location dependent)
- Competitive salary based on experience.
- Competitive benefits based on location
- Learning & growth opportunities
- This is a Fixed term contract with a possibility of extension based on performance
Application Process: Rolling basis, interviews happening soon!
Terms
- Location is Remote (UK or East Africa preferred)
Our Culture & Tenets(Values) 🌱
We’re ambitious. Are you? Educate! is growing fast, so new opportunities are opening up and expanding all the time. We’re inspired by people with drive, and we love to help them reach their full potential. We expect everyone at Educate! to contribute above and beyond their job description, grow their skills, and advance their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey of their careers, and we are committed to supporting our staff members on that journey.
- We put Youth First, Impact-Obsessed - We are purpose-driven, focused on impact, and prioritize what truly matters. We listen to youth, design our efforts around their needs, and ensure every dollar creates transformative experiences they value.
- We Exceed Expectations - We take pride in going above and beyond to achieve the best results—proactively identifying problems and seeking solutions without waiting or stopping at what's requested.
- We Are Always Learning - We are committed to seeking and applying new knowledge and ideas. We stay open-minded and continuously try new things, experiment, grow, and improve. We invest in learning for ourselves and our teams.
- We are One Team, Many Views - We value all individuals, believe diverse ideas and open dialogue drive excellence, foster a supportive and respectful environment where everyone can freely express themselves. We work as one team and prioritize the organization's mission over personal or team interests.
- We have the Startup Mindset - We innovate relentlessly to grow our impact, we never think “we have arrived” or “we’re done.”We constantly challenge the status quo, embrace change, and move quickly toward our vision. Unafraid of failure, we question anything that hinders progress.
Every person at Educate! — from interns to the executive director — is evaluated by how they live up to these five cultural tenets. They are at the core of how we achieve our mission and why we work as well as we do. Educate is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all who interact in our community. In creating this environment, we encourage people from a variety of cultures, backgrounds and life experiences to join our diverse team.
We’re committed to ensuring all candidates are screened for child and youth safety. As part of the process, you’ll need to provide a Certificate of Good Conduct. Educate! reserves the right to withdraw employment offers if any risks to youth are identified.