About
I'm Brian Chirchir, a Nairobi-based Senior Product Manager, builder, and ILO-certified trainer with 8+ years of work across products used by more than 1M people and programmes spanning 30+ countries. I've shaped products at Safaricom/M-PESA, IntelliSOFT, GeoPoll, and 4RDigital, and I now run Civanta.io, where I'm building tools for financial inclusion and entrepreneurship training.
I hold an MSc from University West in Sweden, where I studied on a Swedish Institute scholarship and wrote my thesis on AI in project management through Activity Theory. That blend of the technical and the human is the thread through everything I do.
I work well with remote-first teams across time zones because much of my career has required clear asynchronous communication, structured evidence, and disciplined stakeholder alignment. Outside of product work, I'm a purpose-driven person who believes technology should reduce inequality, not widen it.
The most honest product thinking begins with what you can't do. Bandwidth limits, regulatory frameworks, cultural context, and budget reality are not obstacles, they are the design brief. Products shaped by real constraints tend to be more resilient, more focused, and more useful than products shaped by wish lists.
In fintech, civic tech, and enterprise, trust is not a nice-to-have. It is the product. A payment reconciliation system that users doubt costs more than one that crashes. An election platform that members question delegitimizes the board it elects. I design for trust first, then layer features on top.
I'm PMP-certified, ILO SIYB-trained, and grounded in PMI Disciplined Agile, HCD, and WCAG. I've also learned that no framework survives first contact with a real user unchanged. The value of methodology is structure when you need it and permission to adapt when you don't.
The SIYB trainers who told me where trainees actually drop off, the field engineers who showed me they work on feature phones, and the SANK members who said 'we don't trust self-registration' shaped better products than any roadmap I could have written alone.
These principles show up most clearly in the product stories, especially PAYGO solar reconciliation, SIYB mentorship, and secure alumni voting.
End-to-end product ownership.
Managed the complete lifecycle across seven products, from problem framing and user research through technical specification, delivery management, and post-launch iteration. At 4RDigital, this meant leading DayLipa and Duka+ across engineering teams, field operations, and international funder expectations.
Infrastructure-aware product strategy.
M-PESA, USSD, offline-first flows, low-bandwidth constraints, and field teams on feature phones are not edge cases to me. DayLipa turned those constraints into a PAYGO reconciliation model that keeps 500+ solar pump devices manageable without treating payment delays as user failure.
Methods turned into usable systems.
I preserve what makes a methodology credible while changing what makes it hard to use. That shows up in the BDS Mentorship Platform UAT runbook, BizFramer, SIYB training workflows, and research operations across a 33-country GBV/SRH study.
Certifications
PMP · ILO SIYB Certified Trainer · McKinsey Forward
Education
MSc IT & Management, University West, Sweden (SISGP Scholar)
Recognition
PMI Kenya Young Professional Award, 2022
Languages
English (fluent) · Swedish (conversational)
Product Owner
2024 - 2026
Led DayLipa and Duka+ product lines covering M-PESA reconciliation, PAYGO solar, and FMCG credit.
Project Manager
2022 - 2024
Delivered Duka+ pilot across 51 retailers and automated tracking systems for scale-up reporting.
London · Remote
IT Project Manager, M-PESA
2022 - 2023
Delivered 3 M-PESA core system projects, drove compliance from 63% to 98% in 3 months, and won the PMI Kenya Young Professional Award.
Nairobi
Business Analyst, Product Development
2023
Handled requirements gathering and sprint planning for a mobile-based survey platform.
Nairobi
Product Manager
2022
Owned the eHealth flagship product and set up the organization's Product Management framework from scratch.
Nairobi
Product Designer · Project Manager
2020 - 2022
Scoped, designed, and delivered 18 client projects with 90% on-time delivery and a 4.5/5 client rating.
Nairobi
Business Systems Analyst, Intern
2019 - 2020
Worked on system requirements analysis and business process mapping.
Nairobi
Research Project Manager
2024 - Present
Managed tracking, recruitment, and reporting across all workstreams for a Commonwealth-commissioned 33-country GBV/SRH research study.
Remote
Founder · Product Owner
2023 - Present
Building BizFramer and WealthTrack, alongside product portfolio and client solutions for emerging markets.
Nairobi
MSc IT & Management
Swedish Institute Scholarship for Global Professionals
2023 - 2024
Project Management Professional (PMP)
2022
Entrepreneurship & Product Innovation
2024
BSc Mathematics & Computer Science
2019
If you need a product person who has shipped under payment, infrastructure, field-operations, and stakeholder pressure, I would like to hear what you are working on.
Start a conversation