About Us

• At M-KOPA, bridging the gender gap and increasing financial and digital inclusion for women is a key impact objective and core to our business strategy. With 40% female customers and 45% female sales agents, we believe in both the commercial and impact case, recognizing that women contribute more of their earned income to households with higher investments in children’s nutrition, education, and healthcare.
• You will lead end-to-end gender-sensitive research, developing hypotheses, choosing appropriate methods, conducting interviews, and generating actionable insights that drive real change. You will own and evolve our gender research framework, ensuring M-KOPA generates meaningful insights about women’s experiences as customers and agents. Working cross-functionally, you will embed a gender lens in design and decision-making, running workshops and sharing research insights to inspire product, sales, and marketing teams.
• This role offers the opportunity to drive insight-led innovation, tackling diverse research questions from building inclusive sales channels to designing gender-equitable products and services. You will also test hypotheses in the field through small-scale pilots and contribute to thought leadership by producing compelling case studies for M-KOPA’s impact reporting.

Expertise

• We are looking for a mission-driven, user-obsessed researcher who thrives at the intersection of gender inclusion, commercial impact, and customer insight. You should be deeply passionate about gender inclusion and the commercial and social impact it can unlock through user-centered design.

Core requirements include:

• 6+ years of hands-on experience in qualitative user research and design thinking, ideally in fast-paced or entrepreneurial environments
• Fluency in both English and Swahili, with ability to connect with users in language and context
• Exceptional empathy, communication, and facilitation skills – creating safe spaces for users to share their experiences
• Experience conducting research in a business or private sector context with an eye for customer insight and commercial value
• Bachelor’s or master’s degree from a leading university
• Ability to thrive in agile, fast-moving environments and comfortable balancing structure with iteration
• Highly self-driven with full ownership mentality and “get-it-done” attitude
• Experience with fintech and digital/financial inclusion for underserved communities
• (Bonus) Experience applying gender equality by design or designing specifically for women