Field Manager

About Pula

We are an insuretech firm that provides agriculture insurance design and execution services, specialising in index based insurance and are backed by top tier VC investors who have invested more than $25 million in the business. Since 2015 we have provided climate insurance to 15.4 million smallholder farmers, 41% of which were women across 19 markets in Africa and Asia who pay an average of $6.8 per season to insure their crops. So far we've unlocked over $2.22 billion of capital from local and international insurance markets for climate risks since we started in 2015 and paid out $40.8 million to our client farmers.

Pula is a fast-paced space, constantly adapting to new opportunities and challenges and we are made up of a high-performance, multi-cultural team. We expect our team to value performance, results and professionalism.

At Pula, our values are: 

• Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!
• Connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.
• Have a Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.
• We have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better. 

According to the UN’s InterGovernmental Panel for Climate Change more than 3.3 billion people globally live in hotspots with high vulnerability to climate change and are now already feeling the impact of climate change through increased temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall. 
Insurance is a tool for vulnerable households in these affected regions to adapt to the effects that climate change is already having today on these households. It is a tool that enables for compensation payment for losses and damages that these households had no part in causing. Insurance compensation enables these households to make adjustments to their day to day livelihoods and practices and therefore allows for an equitable and just transition.

At Pula, we are building the systems that enable farmers worldwide to access insurance, using technology to insure this previously uninsured worldwide. We work in over 17 countries across Africa and Asia, and by 2021, have facilitated crop insurance cover to over 6 million farmers, 30% of which are women, across Kenya, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Zambia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. We are a for profit, and have raised over $10 million from leading venture and institutional investors as well as developed philanthropic relationships with private foundations and bilateral donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and German Insure Resilience Solutions Fund that have accelerated investments in our target markets.

Pula is proudly fast paced, constantly learning from the challenges we face and overcome. We are proudly culturally diverse but united in our ambition of continuous high-performance. By challenging ourselves we believe that we can overcome the hard problems we love solving. 

At Pula, our culture is defined by our: 

1.Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!

2. Ability to connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.

3. Our Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.

4. Ability to have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.

Who you are: 

• You understand that we are helping to protect the food security of nations.
• You have an intuitive understanding of rural life drawn from personal or professional experience
• You want to make a difference.
• You have a pro-active, problem-solver’s mindset
• You are not afraid to roll up your sleeves to get things done. 
• You are an effective communicator

What you will be doing:

We go to the remotest of areas to measure yields as farmers harvest. From North Nigeria, South Zambia, Northern Kenya; name it. We are there. We do not believe in hiding behind a desk to come up with fuzzy claim reports from black boxes that do not reflect the outcome on the ground. We want our payouts to reflect the farmers’ outcomes. We deeply care about that. 

The Field Manager at Pula has an essential role of leading the teams that interact with farmers and partners on the ground. You will be responsible for collecting the most complete and accurate data possible on farmers and their harvests which will stand up to the most intense scrutiny. This entails recruiting and training effective teams and contractors as well as engaging clients, government officials, and other stakeholders with clear, timely communication to ensure smooth operations. All of this must be executed with the utmost efficiency to minimize the cost of insuring smallholder farmers, thus ensuring the greatest number of farmers can be covered.

Client-Specific Deliverables

• Establish and maintain interpersonal relationships with key partners and stakeholders across the private and public sector to ensure smooth running of project operations.
• Oversee national wide sensitization campaigns while engaging with internal and external stakeholders including government, insurance companies and other public and private sector partners. 
• Coordinate with the commercial and actuarial teams to provide monthly progress reports for all field operations activities
• Coordinate and deliver high level trainings and workshops to Pula’s partners and clients across different industries
• Provide strategic guidance to the field operations team 

Execution of data collection:

• Recruit enumerators and staff who meet or exceed assessment criteria and show year-on-year improvement
• Monitor data collection closely and action any flags 
• Ensure that any data collection issues, unusual events or significant farm losses are meticulously, indisputably documented. 
• Ensure timely execution of data collection such that all harvests are captured and data collection is complete within given timeframes.
• Ensure meticulous completion - leave no farm behind.

Oversee the systems and processes that drive our Customer Support systems while leading the call center operations

• Validate farmer lists
• Execute surveys to monitor crop progress, including forecasted harvest times and crop development report surveys
• Ensure field work is closely followed by quality assurance and verification to spot deficiencies in real time for immediate correction.

Evaluate efficiency of service delivery and operations using spending data, while actioning strategic initiatives to keep costs low for field operations and call center teams

• Detailed assessment of real costs by location and responsibility
• Apply ingenuity to find savings wherever possible
• Request disbursements of field expenses in a timely manner with sufficient advance to ensure no delays are incurred. 
• Ensure all expenses are reconciled within policy deadlines.
• Monitor budget vs spend closely

Strategic Development and learning

• Organize post-project team workshops to evaluate key learnings and improvements in the design, tools, and execution of the project
• Translate learnings into action with updated work plan templates, tools etc, coordinating with global colleagues to ensure these are adopted widely.
• Coordinating with the innovations and expansion teammates on launching new initiatives and pilots

Other operational work

• Design data collection tools and any other operational related tools where necessary.
• Write content for any stakeholders as asked (internal, clients, etc)
• Other assignments as tasked

The Field Manager will report to the Director of Field Operations or Expansion, while also working closely with other departments to coordinate execution throughout the client journey. 

What you need to be successful:

• 5 years + experience working in agriculture/ social enterprises. Experience leading field operations or Monitoring and Evaluation department is an added advantage
• Experience working at national level in a fast moving environment/ start up
• Deep commitment to the "art of management" and nuances of modern management practice
• Ability to work independently – highly self-motivated
• Creative problem-solving skills
• Highly collaborative, with an outgoing personality and clear and consistent communication
• Detail-oriented, meticulous, and attentive to accuracy
• Ability to grasp complex analytical concepts quickly and thoroughly
• Prioritize and manage multiple projects simultaneously, ensuring timely delivery

What Pula will bring to the table

• Growth potential: At Pula, we are building the systems that enable farmers worldwide to access insurance, using technology to insure this previously uninsured worldwide. We work in over 19 countries across Africa and Asia, and by 2023, have facilitated crop insurance cover to over 5 million farmers, 40% of which are women. We are a for profit, and have raised over $25 million from leading venture and institutional investors as well as developed philanthropic relationships with private foundations and bilateral donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and German Insure Resilience Solutions Fund that have accelerated investments in our target markets.
• Market Leader: Not only is the opportunity massive, but Pula is by far the market leader in it’s category with 11m farmers insured as of 2023.
• Solid: Pula has been funded by leading venture capital investors (Omidyar Network, ACCION, MercyCorps) and global philanthropic institutions (MasterCard Foundation, CGAP/World Bank as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Pula closed an oversubscribed $20m series B funding despite the economic downturn.
  
• Respected: Winner of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019, Winner of The InsureTech of the Award, Africa. Featured on TED talks, The New York Times, The Economist.
• Impact and creation: This is a high-impact role, that offers a unique opportunity to bring the company to the next level, whilst developing new strategies, approaches and ideas.
• Leadership: The founders & CEO foster a culture of transparency, respect, high performance, pragmatism, execution and personal development.
• Purpose: It is rare to find a professional opportunity that offers accelerated professional development and a life purpose. Pula is going through a second phase of accelerated growth that will naturally provide professional development, whilst contributing to the financial stability of small farmers in the emerging markets.
• Remuneration: Competitive base salary accordingly with seniority and experience, commission on closed sales and an employee share option plan that offers an attractive equity upside.

To learn more about Pula you can visit

TED Talk: Crop Insurance, an Idea Worth Seeding
New York Times: He Grew up on a Farm. Now, He Helps Protect Them
The Economist: The Poor, Who Most Need Insurance, Are Least Likely to Have It

How to apply

Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English.

Our process:

Stage 1 The Culture Interview: Your complete applications will be reviewed and those shortlisted will be invited for a culture interview to understand if you have Pula DNA

Stage 2 The Technical Interview: Those that pass the culture interview will be invited to complete an assignment that will give you a good sense of what working at Pula is like. This way you will get to know if you like the job, and we get to know you. Those with completed assignments will be invited for a technical interview with the hiring manager.

Stage 3 The Panel Interview: Those that pass the technical interview will be interviewed by a panel of future colleagues who you will be working with at Pula so you can get to know your new colleagues and they can get to know you.

Stage 4 The Reference Check: as described :-)

Stage 5 Offer: If you have gotten this far, you may pat yourself on the back- as you’ll receive an offer!

Pula’s mission is to provide farmer resilience. To achieve this, we put our small holder farmers that use our services and the employees that provide them at the heart of everything we do. For that purpose, Pula was created to be an equal opportunity employer that celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.