Latest Job Vacancies at Bridge International Academies

Bridge International Academies is the world’s largest and fastest-growing chain of primary and pre-primary schools with more than 400 academies and 120,000 pupils in Kenya and Uganda. We democratize the right to succeed by giving families living in poverty access to the high-quality education that will allow their children to live a very different life. We are recruiting to fill the position below:     Job Title: Operations Programme Manager Location: Any City, Nigeria Background

• The Operations Team designs, implements, and manages academy-level operations and support. We are the nerve centre of the company
• Certain aspects of what we do originate in other departments or teams – from Development, Marketing, Recruitment and Training, Finance or Human Resources – but end with Operations
• No matter how well other departments may complete their individual functions, it is up to Ops to be the interface that brings all academy-level support functions together.

• The role of Programme Managers is a microcosm of the overarching goal of the entire Operations Team, broken down by specific functional components
• Each Programme Manager has a unique sphere that s/he is responsible for owning.  Within that realm of responsibility, Programme Managers identify and analyse operational needs, design strategies and processes to address these challenges, and supervise the necessary training, monitoring, and constant adjustments needed for these programmes to execute successfully.

• Programme Managers work closely with other departments to design and run these programmes.

• Teacher Staffing- Bridge promises to have a teacher in class every day of the academic year. To meet this promise to our parents, the Programme Manager must work closely with our Recruiting and Training and People Operations Departments to make sure we find effective ways of filling local vacancies and with our Customer Care Department to devise ways to manage our nationwide team of substitute teachers so that can immediately provide cover for any class missing a teacher due to sickness or other. The challenge is to efficiently and effectively provide coverage for over 4,500 classrooms across Kenya and Uganda.
• Academy Repairs - with over 400 academies, we need to continually ensure our academies are in good condition and account for both minor and major repairs. The Programme Manager must identify common challenges and problems and provide efficient and cost-effective solutions. This programme must work closely with our Construction Department and with regional managers to ensure quality repairs are carried out.
• Lesson Delivery - Bridge’s teachers use teacher computer tablets to deliver our Kenyan- and Ugandan-curriculum focused lessons every day. To make sure everything is working properly, the Programme Manager must analyse vast amounts of data to pinpoint any challenges in this process. This includes working closely with the Software Team to limit the number of technological issues that come up and to immediately solve those that do arise and coordinating with our Academic Team to devise strategies and processes to drive improvements in lesson deliveries.

• Bachelor's Degree required
• Master's preferred
• Minimum 3 years work experience required.
• Ideal candidates should have experience managing projects, identifying business challenges through data and observation, creating solutions for these issues, and overseeing an operational programme.
• They should be proficient analysing and managing large amounts of data and comfortable working closely with different departments and teams.
• Experience bringing ideas and programmes to scale, working at similar ambitious start-up companies, or building and managing teams across countries is an added plus.

• A detailed doer - You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a startup or social enterprise.
• A creative problem-solver - Growing any enterprise from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in often challenging, low-resource communities and runs on fees averaging just $6 a month per pupil. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand. Every dollar you spend is a dollar our customers, who live on less than $2 a day, will have to pay for.
• A customer advocate - Our customers - these families living on less than $2 a day per person – never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). Every decision you make considers their customer benefit, experience, and value.
• A life-long learner - You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.

• The operations department is responsible for the critical performance of our entire network of academies in East Africa, including operations, marketing, personnel management, instructional delivery, expenses & payroll, parent and community relations, facilities, and more.

• The Programme Officer is responsible for supporting the Programme Manager in ensuring each academy has the proper number of teachers to teach all classes, creating and operationalizing academy personnel disciplinary policy, and coordinating teacher and Academy Manager (AM) recruiting at existing academies.

• Ensure all teachers and Academy Managers have downloaded scripts for each day
• Ensure the Script Availability report is working (including conducting field tests)
• Ensure the stored procedure for mapping lessons to teachers has been programmed by the scheduler team and that schedules received are in-line with this
• Synching daily to check for availability and correctness of schedules on Smartphone and Teacher Computers
• Communicate with the scheduling team cases of missing or incorrect scripts noted or reported by academies via CRM tickets and communicate this information back to academies
• Ensure the Lesson Schedules v2 report is working (including conducting field tests)
• Ensure each teacher is fulfilling their mandate in delivering lessons every day of class
• Overseeing early KCPE preparation and collection of documents from parents
• Take disorganized data coming from multiple sources eg. phone call results, emails, surveys and organize that data into specific data repositories (Microsoft Excel; software systems) according to the appropriate format
• Create simple data tables in Microsoft Excel for further analysis
• Screen CRM for issues related to the above programmes and respond to those issues accordingly
• Create surveys to collect specific data

• Bachelor's degree in any business related field
• 2-3 years’ experience in a fast paced environment
• Proficiency in Microsoft Excel
• Experience working with Navision is a plus
• Experience working with a culturally and socioeconomically diverse workforce
• Ability to handle multiple high demand projects
• Good organizational and persuasive skills.
• Keen eye for detail
• Efficient report writing skills.
• Excellent writing and oral communication skills.

• A detailed doer - You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. You can multi-task dozens of such projects at once and never lose sight of the details. Likely, you have some experience in a start-up or other rapid-growth company.
• A networking mastermind - You excel at meeting new people and turning them into advocates.  You communicate in a clear, conscientious, and effective way in both written and oral speech.  You can influence strangers in the course of a single conversation. Allies and colleagues will go to bat for your ideas.
• A creative problem-solver - Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges.  On top of that, Bridge works in volatile, low-resource communities and runs on fees averaging just $6 a month per pupil.  You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand.  Every dollar you spend is a dollar our customers, who live on less than $2 a day, will have to pay for.
• A customer advocate - Our customers - these families living on less than $2 a day per person – never leave your mind.  You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future).  You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like.  Every decision you make considers their customer benefit, experience, and value.
• A life-long learner - You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today.