Rori Operations Manager

About the Role

We are looking for an exceptional individual to join our team as Operations Manager to run operations for Rori, an AI-powered mathematics tutor deployed across five African countries—coordinating field teams, keeping a major research trial on track, and solving problems that don’t have established playbooks.

Why This Role Is Interesting

You will work across a team that spans five countries and includes engineers, researchers, curriculum designers, and in-country implementation leads. You will gain exposure to building educational tools with cutting-edge AI—and learn what it actually takes to make them work within government systems and under-resourced school contexts. This isn’t a typical program management job. You will be part of the small core team shaping how this program evolves. On any given week you might be troubleshooting device logistics in rural Ghana, helping prepare a funder report on RCT progress, coordinating between an engineering team and a field implementation lead in Rwanda, or investigating why student usage dropped at a particular school cluster. The problems are novel because the work itself is novel—there is no established playbook for implementing AI tutoring at scale in low-resource contexts.

The Operations Manager, Rori will:

• Own the operational picture across all pilot sites.
• Coordinate with implementation leads in five countries to track progress, surface challenges, and keep the central team informed of what’s actually happening on the ground.
• Investigate, don’t just report. When implementation falls behind schedule or something isn’t working, dig into the underlying causes and come with informed recommendations.
• Keep the research on track. Support the operational side of our Year 5 RCT in Ghana—this means helping ensure implementation fidelity across dozens of schools so that the research holds up.
• Help manage stakeholder relationships. We report to multiple research and philanthropic partners with different formats, deadlines, and expectations. You’ll coordinate these reporting cycles and ensure they’re accurate and on time.
• Bridge field and product. Translate what you’re hearing from implementation teams into clear, actionable information for the product and engineering teams—and make sure field teams understand what’s coming from the product side.
• Navigate the complexity of government partnerships and technology deployment. This work involves navigating school systems, device logistics, connectivity constraints, teacher relationships, and government timelines simultaneously.

About Rori

Rori is an AI-powered mathematics tutor reaching students across Sub-Saharan Africa via WhatsApp. Students receive personalized math instruction through a system combining structured mastery-based learning with conversational AI—delivered on the most accessible digital platform in the region. Early research shows students using Rori learn at twice the rate of comparison groups. We are now active in five countries with multiple concurrent pilots, a major randomized controlled trial underway in Ghana, and partnerships with Anthropic, the University of Oxford, the University of Ghana, and J-P-AL. The question we are trying to answer is one of the most important in global education: can AI tutoring work at scale in the world’s most under-resourced classrooms?

Location and Reporting

This is a full-time, annually renewable remote position. The role reports to the Rori Senior Product Manager and works closely with Rising’s research, product, and engineering teams. Preference for candidates in time zones within ±2 hours of GMT. The role includes one to two trips per year to implementation sites, most likely Ghana and/or Rwanda.

About Rising Academies

Across the developing world, more children than ever are in school—but they are not learning. A recent study estimated that less than 1% of school children in Sub-Saharan Africa attend a school where the teaching meets basic standards of quality. At Rising Academies, we are changing that. Our mission is to create the best schools and the most powerful teaching and learning tools for the people who need them most. We are one of the fastest-growing quality-focused education companies in Africa, and a Certified B Corp®. Founded in Sierra Leone in 2014, we have spent over a decade crafting a unique blend of high-tech and low-tech learning solutions proven to dramatically improve student outcomes that elevate teaching quality at scale. Seven RCTs have shown that the students we support learn faster than their peers in comparable schools. Today, we serve more than a quarter of a million students across 1,000 schools in West and East Africa through complimentary channels:

• Pioneering Great-Value Private Schools: Our innovative networks of private schools deliver best-in-class results for children while developing highly scalable new technologies and approaches.
• Scalable Government Partnerships: We partner and collaborate with local and national governments across Africa to transform the quality of public school systems at scale.
• High Impact Solutions for Partners: We offer our proven high-impact solutions to other education providers and schools to improve school performance & increase outcomes.

Qualifications and Experience

• 3+ years of experience in operations, program implementation, or education delivery.
• Classroom teaching experience strongly preferred (Teach First or similar program alumni encouraged to apply).
• Experience coordinating across multiple teams or stakeholders.
• Ability to manage several concurrent timelines and workstreams.
• Comfortable with standard productivity tools (Google Suite, spreadsheets, project trackers).
• Formal project management certifications are not required—but you must be organized, analytically sharp, and have a strong understanding of educational contexts.

About You

• Clear, direct communicator who works well across cultures and contexts.
• Proactive problem-solver who investigates before escalating.
• Organized and reliable, comfortable managing ambiguity and shifting priorities.
• Able to build trust and strong working relationships with distributed teams across multiple countries.
• Effective working independently in a remote, asynchronous environment.
• Genuinely motivated by the challenge of improving education in the Global South.

Application Deadline and Start Date

Target start date is mid-March 2026. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis—we encourage you to apply as soon as possible.

Benefits

• Compensation: We offer a competitive salary and benefits package. We regularly benchmark our compensation against comparable businesses, social ventures and non-profits. Rising’s goal is to be transparent about salaries at all levels of the organisation and have a standard, global pay scale for all positions that is non-negotiable.
• Continuous Development and Growth: Rising is a Certified B Corp and twice named in its 'Best for the World' list. We are committed to continuous development, which is grounded in our values and a vital part of how we bring the ‘Rising Way’ to life. We provide a nurturing environment where our staff are supported with the right ongoing conversations with their managers, among teams and as an organization, to support their career growth and help us reach our goals.
• Impact: Our students achieve learning gains 2.4 times faster than their peers in comparable schools, positioning our impact in the top 10% of global education interventions. This role offers an opportunity to contribute meaningfully to this proven success.

Rising is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to providing a work environment that is inclusive and free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions are based on individual qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, national origin, family or parental status, veteran or disability status. Rising is committed to creating a culture within the organisation, and its schools, that recognises the importance of safeguarding children and prioritising their rights and needs. We strive to uphold international safeguarding standards, and keep the safety and well-being of our students at the heart of what we do. All Rising employees are expected to abide by the Child Protection Policy, and to have the same level of commitment to protect children from harm. Safeguarding questions are part of every interview process and all Rising employees undergo reference checks before joining the organisation.