- Role: Operations Manager
- Venture: Mountain Harvest
- Location: Mbale, Uganda
About Mountain Harvest
Mountain Harvest is a young, innovative coffee production company that works to raise the quality of life for smallholder Arabica coffee farmers on Mt Elgon in eastern Uganda, by increasing incomes, helping build farm and household assets and enhancing farmer resilience to shocks on a commercially and environmentally sustainable basis.
Mountain Harvest believes such change can only be achieved by unlocking and monetizing unrealized potential of the farmers coffee and farms. Our approach involves three major interventions:
- Elevating quality into the premium segment of the specialty coffee market,
- Disconnecting pricing from the commodity and Fair Trade markets through a relationship-based trade with roaster-retailers that pay substantially higher prices for quality and impact (social and environmental)
- Using the additional margin generated from higher prices to invest at the farm level through an intense, service-oriented engagement with farmers.
As Operations Manager, you will work with the Mountain Harvest team in Uganda to make iterative change towards an organizational culture focused on outcomes rather than process, in support of the organization’s goals.
About You
Mountain Harvest works to open new possibilities for coffee farmers on Mount Elgon by raising the quality and value of their coffee using ecological, climate-smart methods and improved processing. Our goal is to increase our average price by roughly 2 times, which we believe is achievable based on recent successes by entrepreneur led start-ups in Burundi and Colombia. The additional margin generated will in turn enable the investment in productivity and quality at the farm level that is necessary to enable realistic pathways out of poverty for our farmers and support the company’s growth so that it can ultimately deliver such life changing value to a larger number of farmers.
We are looking for an experienced operations manager to collaborate with the Mountain Harvest to make iterative change towards an organizational culture focused on outcomes rather than process, in support of the organization’s goals to move our coffee into the premium segment of the specialty coffee market.
Responsibilities
As Operations Manager for Mountain Harvest, your responsibilities will include:
- Work closely with Field, Warehouse and Administration teams to understand operations, identify inefficiencies and recommend and implement innovative solutions.
- Improve operational systems and processes for field operations, warehouse operations, inventory management and control, and logistics.
- Contribute to organizational planning and strategy.
- Develop and implement metrics and KPI reporting which support improved operational efficiency.
- Strong leadership skills with the ability to coach and mentor others.
- Other related duties assigned.
Sound exciting? Here’s who we are looking for:
Skills & Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Operations Management or related field.
- Proven experience as operations manager.
- A minimum of 3-5 years’ relevant work experience.
- Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to identify inefficiencies or systemic problems within the team and create solutions that the team can implement.
- Ability to inspire and train people who do not directly report to you to adopt new processes and habits.
- Flexible and creative problem-solving.
- Ability to balance both the big picture and the small details that drive excellent operations.
- Experience in project coordination.
- Ability to work in a fast paced, team-based environment.
- Proven ability to multitask, appropriately prioritize workflow and complete tasks.
- Committed team player with strong organizational skills.
