Senior Manager - Sales Force Saftey

Senior Manager, Sales Force Safety | M-Kopa (Global Role)

Architecting safety for 25,000+ field agents across five African markets

You've built safety programs. You've managed compliance. You've probably even transformed organizational culture around worker protection. But here's the question: have you ever designed a safety ecosystem for 25,000+ field agents operating across five African markets—agents whose daily work is unlocking financial inclusion for millions?

This isn't about checking boxes. It's about architecting something that doesn't exist yet.

The Context: Building Protection At Scale

M-KOPA has grown from 5 million to 7 million customers in the past year, unlocking $2+ billion in credit for people previously excluded from financial services. 86% of our customers report improved quality of life. 70% use our products for income generation. Behind these numbers? A 25,000+ sales force network operating across Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, and South Africa—the engine that powers everything we do.

We're on a trajectory to reach 10 million customers. But growth at this velocity requires infrastructure that can scale with it. We've deliberately expanded our team by 300+ people in the past year, not randomly, but strategically building the foundations that enable the next phase. This role is part of that infrastructure: the person who ensures our sales force operates safely, protected, and supported as we scale.

Why This Timing Matters

You're reading this because we're at an inflection point. We've scaled the business. Now we're systematizing how we protect the people who make it possible. This isn't about fixing what's broken—it's about building proactively for the next 18,000 agents we'll bring into the network. You're joining at the moment when your frameworks won't just govern 25,000 people; they'll shape how we protect 40,000+ as we continue growing.

The audit findings aren't problems—they're your mandate. They're proof that leadership recognizes the gap and is investing in solving it properly, once, at the strategic level.

What Makes This Different

Most safety roles manage compliance. This one architects transformation.

Your typical corporate safety role: implementing policies someone else designed, managing incidents reactively, reporting upward. This role: you own the strategy. You design the governance. You decide what good looks like across five markets with distinct cultural contexts, regulatory environments, and risk profiles. You'll work with Legal, Audit, Risk & Compliance (LARC), HR, and Sales Leadership—not as the person executing their priorities, but as the expert they defer to.

You won't just respond to gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) concerns. You'll build the preventive frameworks, the grievance mechanisms, the training curricula that stop incidents before they happen. You'll deploy technology—rapid response systems, anonymous reporting tools—that most organizations in our space haven't even considered yet.

And everything you build will directly enable financial inclusion for millions of people accessing products and services for the first time.

What You'll Actually Do

You'll spend your first 90 days conducting systematic risk assessments across all five markets, identifying the highest-priority safety gaps and vulnerabilities. You'll interview sales leaders, DSRs, country teams. You'll examine incident data, audit findings, existing protocols. You'll emerge with a comprehensive remediation roadmap—not a document that sits on a shelf, but an executable plan with clear ownership, milestones, and measurable outcomes.

Then you build. You'll design grievance mechanisms that sales agents actually trust and use. You'll create training programs that embed safety thinking into onboarding and ongoing development. You'll establish quarterly OKRs that tie safety performance to business metrics. You'll implement monitoring dashboards that give real-time visibility into safety metrics and emerging risks across the entire network.

You'll also lead partnerships—with external security vendors, technology providers, specialized GBVH service providers—ensuring our sales force has access to protection capabilities that match the complexity of their operating environment.

This role is demanding. You'll manage competing priorities from senior stakeholders across functions. You'll navigate cultural sensitivities around reporting and intervention. You'll make decisions with imperfect information in fast-moving situations. And you're probably ready for exactly this.

What You Bring

• Extensive progressive experience building safety, compliance, or welfare programs in complex, multi-geography organizations—particularly in emerging markets or field-based operations. You've done more than manage programs; you've architected them from strategic vision through operational execution.
• Deep subject matter expertise in gender-based violence prevention, field staff safety protocols, and crisis management, with demonstrable impact in high-stakes environments. Professional certifications in safety management, crisis response, or GBVH prevention strengthen your candidacy.
• Proven ability to design scalable operational frameworks, lead cross-functional stakeholder partnerships, and deliver measurable results in high-visibility environments. You bring strong analytical capabilities and understand how to build monitoring and evaluation systems that actually drive improvement.

The Reality Check

This role reports to the Director of Customer Care & Retail with matrix relationships to Sales Heads and General Managers across five markets. You'll be influencing without direct authority frequently. You'll be the most senior person in the room on your topic, which means you need to bring both confidence and humility—confidence in your expertise, humility in how you bring others along.

You'll work in a global role that's remote/hybrid, but you'll need comfort operating across African time zones and traveling to markets regularly. Your frameworks need to work in Lagos and Nairobi and Kampala—contexts with different regulatory environments, cultural norms, and operational challenges.

Your Impact

You'll build the sales force safety program that becomes the industry standard. You'll establish M-KOPA as the employer of choice for field agents because they know they're genuinely protected. You'll create frameworks that other organizations in our space study and replicate.

More directly: you'll ensure that the 25,000+ people powering financial inclusion for 7 million customers can do that work safely, confidently, and sustainably.

Ready to architect safety at scale? Let's talk.

Why M-Kopa?

At M-KOPA, we empower our people to own their careers through diverse development programs, coaching partnerships, and on-the-job training. We support individual journeys with family-friendly policies, prioritize well-being, and embrace flexibility.

Join us in shaping the future of M-KOPA as we grow together. Explore more at m-kopa.com.

Recognized four times by the Financial Times as one Africa's fastest growing companies (2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025) and by TIME100 Most influential companies in the world 2023 and 2024 , we've served over 5 million customers, unlocking $1.5 billion in cumulative credit for the unbanked across Africa.

Important Notice

M-KOPA is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to assembling a diverse, broadly trained staff. Women, minorities, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

M-KOPA explicitly prohibits the use of Forced or Child Labour and respects the rights of its employees to agree to terms and conditions of employment voluntarily, without coercion, and freely terminate their employment on appropriate notice. M-KOPA shall ensure that its Employees are of legal working age and shall comply with local laws for youth employment or student work, such as internships or apprenticeships. 

M-KOPA does not collect/charge any money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement. This means that we never ask for ‘recruitment fees’, ‘processing fees’, ‘interview fees’, or any other kind of money in exchange for offer letters or interviews at any time during the hiring process.

Applications for this position will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Shortlisting and interviews will take place at any stage during the recruitment process. We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a suitable candidate is selected before the advertised closing date.