Operations Manager
Taimaka
📍 Remote (Global) 🕔 Full Time
⌛ 31/01/2025 💰$37.5-50K USD
We’re looking for a talented, eager to learn early career professional (or exceptionally talented recent graduate) to help manage Taimaka’s operations team. You’ll oversee our finance, HR, and compliance activities in the US and Nigeria, including managing our Admin Officer in Nigeria. You’ll be supported by an operations contractor who can help instruct you in the technical aspects of your role, as well as our Executive Director, who will assist with setting priorities for the Operations Team (though we expect you to do a lot of independent prioritization). With Taimaka on track to treat 75,000 cases of severe acute malnutrition in U5 children in the next three years, your work will be critical in keeping our organization’s growth on track so that we can deliver for our patients.
We want someone who can learn by doing, can solve problems from first principles, and is comfortable working and setting priorities independently. We think this job is very learnable, so even if you have limited experience in operations, but care about our mission and are resourceful and ambitious, we encourage you to apply.
About the Job
Taimaka’s operations team supports the rest of Taimaka’s work by creating key systems and overseeing human resources and finance. Operations’ job is to worry about everything our program team or research team does not have expertise or capacity to so that the whole organization can carry out the business of saving lives as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Our Operations team currently consists of ~1.5 FTE: our Admin Officer in Nigeria, who carries out day to day tasks in Nigeria like initiating payments and managing our office, an operations contractor, who handles bookkeeping, legal filings, and other compliance tasks, and our Executive Director, who backfills additional capacity on some of these tasks.
The Operations Manager (this job) is designed to substantially increase the capacity on this team, and take charge of most of these activities. You would oversee the Admin Officer and assist in their professional development, take over some of the operations contractor’s responsibilities (ramping up over time depending on how much spare capacity you have), and help set priorities for this team (instead of our Executive Director, who has a limited amount of time to spare for operations). You would also work on projects we currently do not have the capacity to undertake, like improving our payment and expense tracking system or procuring key commodities from overseas (where they may be substantially cheaper).
Specific Responsibilities
Human Resources and HR Systems - 25% of your time
Proactively propose and develop comprehensive HR policies (promotion frameworks, salary inflation adjustments in Nigeria, fraud whistleblowing, child safeguarding, sexual harassment, etc.). Create and oversee reporting lines for breaches of policies, and monitor compliance with policies.
Onboard new employees, reinforcing key organizational values. Handle legal requirements, like W-4 and I-9 forms in the US.
Iterate on our hiring protocols and practices and facilitate individual hiring rounds by writing job descriptions, designing test tasks with input from managers, etc.
Help systematize performance reviews across the organization by developing standard review templates, training modules for managers on how to conduct performance reviews, and a framework to ensure performance reviews are conducted with fidelity.
Create systems to assess staff satisfaction and collect feedback from staff.
Financial Management and Compliance - 25% of your time
Create and manage improved systems to track expense and payment requests. Ensure payments are being released to staff and vendors in a timely manner. Assist in processing payments (e.g., by initiating payments from our US bank account).
Either perform bookkeeping yourself in QuickBooks for both our US and Nigerian entities or liaise with an external bookkeeper to do so.
Manage the technical aspects of the budget creation process, and ensure that budgets across the organization are prepared in a standardized manner. Provide monthly reports on budgeted vs. actual expenditures.
Liaise with external accountants for our annual audit and the filing of our Form 990.
Coordinate with our legal counsel in Nigeria to ensure Nigerian compliance filings are completed in a timely manner.
Logistics and Procurement - 10% of your time
Work with our logistics team in Nigeria to improve their systems and practices, e.g. by developing a system that tracks procurement requests from request to approval to purchase to delivery in a way that is visible to our whole team.
Coordinate overseas procurement when necessary (e.g., by managing the purchase of RUTF from non-Nigerian suppliers and shipping those supplies to Nigeria).
Travel, Housing, and Office Administration - 10% of your time
Oversee the Admin Officer in Nigeria in managing our office in Gombe and the housing we maintain for staff in Gombe. Ensure constant supply of internet, electricity, water, etc. Establish points of contact for staff for maintenance issues, etc.
Coordinate cost-efficient travel arrangements for staff.
Manage visa process for personnel traveling to Nigeria.
Administrative Staff Oversight - 10% of your time
Supervise administrative staff (e.g., the Admin Officer in Nigeria), conducting weekly check-ins, setting clear expectations, and evaluating their performance.
Coordinate with external contractors, like bookkeepers, accountants, and legal services providers.
Work with the Executive Director to set quarterly goals for the operations team, and translate those quarterly goals into monthly goals.
Ad Hoc Tasks - 20% of your time
We think a lot of the benefit of having a full-time operations staffer will be to serve as a utility infielder of sorts, handling new problems as they arise. We expect that you will jump into new tasks and learn by doing.
Future Growth Trajectories
Future growth trajectories for excelling hires could look like:
Overseeing a growing team and budget as our organization grows and our operations needs expand with it.
Specializing in a specific area of operations, like HR or finance, as our needs grow.
If you don’t want to stay in operations, garnering hands-on experience with humanitarian programming that you could parlay into another role or into starting your own organization.
About You
This is an entry-level position, suited to an early to mid career individual interested in operations. We are looking to hire someone with a lot of talent and potential who can grow with us as we expand. We are open to hearing from more senior individuals as well, as we anticipate our operations needs will expand quite a bit over the next few years, with the caveat that Taimaka sets salaries for all staff based on location and need, not necessarily what a position may pay at another organization. We encourage talented recent graduates to apply, as we think this job is very learnable.
If you are not sure whether you’re the right fit for the position, err on the side of applying. Our initial application is designed to be fairly painless to complete and our priority is finding candidates with high overall potential, an ability to learn, and who align with our core philosophy of cost-effectiveness and innovation, rather than who check specific boxes.
Must Haves:
Candidates must have the following to qualify:
Bachelor’s degree or higher
An ability to learn new skills, particularly by diving in headfirst and learning by doing
An ability to set your own priorities and independently solve problems
Is a highly organized, conscientious person
Is general tech-savvy, and has used or is willing to learn tools like Google Workspace, Slack, Airtable, Zapier, etc.
Nice to Haves:
The more of these that describe you, the better, but none are required. Even if none of these describe you, but you feel like you are talented and can learn, err on the side of applying.
2 years or more of work experience
1 year or more of work experience in operations
Why Work at Taimaka
A job with a large, tangible impact on the world - your work will drive a highly cost-effective global health program and save lives
A high degree of autonomy and opportunity to shape Taimaka and our work as we continue a period of rapid growth
A passionate and dynamic startup culture, with talented colleagues and the opportunity to take ownership of meaningful projects
Challenging, but rewarding and stimulating work.
Why Not Work at Taimaka
Working at Taimaka may not be the right fit for everyone! If you aren’t comfortable with the following, this may not be the right job for you:
Dealing with ambiguity
Taimaka is a maturing startup: there is a lot less bureaucracy and oversight than you would find at a larger organization. This can be good, in the sense that you can get hands on with projects and move fast, but it also means that you will typically receive less support from your manager than you might expect. You will need to set your own priorities and do a lot of independent problem solving in order to succeed.
