Principal Specialist, Solutioning, Bengaluru

Role: Senior Product Manager, Bengaluru
Experience: upto 10 years
Salary: upto 17 LPA
Note: Tamil and Kannad Languages are preferred.
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About the role
Our livelihoods team works with nano-entrepreneurs to enable sustainable income uplift and positively influence their entrepreneurial mindset. One of our primary focus segments is nano-entrepreneurs in peri-urban areas, particularly urban slums. The common business segments we work with include fruit and vegetable vendors, petty/kirana shops, fancy carts, food vendors, and cloth sellers.

Once the nature of the business and its challenges are understood, we deliver templatized interventions—spanning sourcing, market linkage, diversification, innovative practices, and business-centric training—with the ultimate goal of driving sustainable income growth and strengthening entrepreneurial mindsets. The program has been running successfully on the ground, and the team is now focused on codifying these interventions into replicable, scalable models that can be amplified through technology.

Key Responsibilities

• Codify Solutions: Study what is working on the ground across sourcing, market linkage, diversification, innovative practices, and training. Turn these insights into clear playbooks covering the core problem, target segment, execution steps, inputs and costs, and expected income outcomes.
• Analyze Gaps: Evaluate segments and solutions that haven't worked thus far and develop practical workarounds.
• Build Frameworks: Create and refine frameworks that account for the realities, challenges, opportunities, and limitations of nano-entrepreneurs to match the right solution to the right segment.
• Design for Replication: Identify which solutions can scale across new cities, segments, and partner contexts versus those dependent on local conditions. Document what must remain standardized and what can be adapted.
• Test and Prove: Design pilots and measurement plans. Use data and field evidence to decide which solutions to scale, fix, or retire, while tracking income and mindset outcomes.
• Partner with Technology: Work closely with product and tech teams to translate solution playbooks into workflows, tools, and digital products—including writing requirements, testing prototypes, and providing field feedback.
• Maintain Ground Connect: Regularly visit the field, meet entrepreneurs, and engage with field teams to ensure solutions stay grounded in real-world conditions.
• Share Learning: Present findings and recommendations to leadership, partners, and funders.

Qualifications & Skills

• ~10 years of experience in livelihoods, social enterprises, or program/product design in similar settings.
• Hands-on experience designing, running, or scaling field-based programs for low-income or informal-sector entrepreneurs.
• Proven track record of turning field practices into structured, repeatable models such as playbooks, SOPs, frameworks, or curricula.
• Strong problem-solving mindset, curiosity, and comfort navigating challenges to test new approaches.
• Comfort with data—able to design simple experiments, interpret results, and use evidence to make decisions.
• Experience working with technology or product teams, paired with a strong interest in tech-enabled scale.
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English and Kannada (working knowledge of Tamil is an added bonus).
• Willingness to spend significant time on the ground and ability to work effectively in urban slum and informal-market settings.