Community Manager Lead

takealot.com, a leading South African online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Community Manager Lead to join our team in Cape Town.

The Senior Community Manager leads a team of Community Managers while directly supporting Personal Shoppers, ensuring excellent community engagement, smooth operations, and achievement of key program goals.

The position reports to the Head of Personal Shopper Program.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage the Community Manager team, setting clear performance expectations and providing coaching, mentorship, and support.
• Actively support Personal Shoppers by serving as a hands-on Community Manager—guiding onboarding, addressing queries, and resolving escalations.
• Facilitate and monitor the achievement of key targets, such as Personal Shopper acquisition, onboarding efficiency, and first-shop rates.
• Ensure consistent, high-quality community engagement by fostering trust and communication between Personal Shoppers, Community Managers, and program leadership.
• Oversee commercial activities post-onboarding, ensuring Personal Shoppers are empowered to drive sales and grow their businesses.
• Implement and uphold Core Values and professional conduct standards across the team.
• Gather feedback and insights from the community to recommend improvements to program processes, training, and support materials.
• Design and deliver team training sessions and best practice sharing to drive professional development.
• Analyze team metrics and KPIs, run bi-weekly check-ins, and report results to the Head of Venture.
• Represent the Community Manager team in cross-functional meetings, contributing operational insights for program development and execution.

Skills, Knowledge & Attributes required:

• Leadership & Team Management: Strong ability to lead, support, coach, and inspire a team towards high performance.
• Community Engagement: Expertise in building trust and relationships with diverse stakeholders, especially in underserved markets.
• Onboarding & Training: Experience in designing and delivering onboarding processes, coaching, and growing team members and community participants.
• Commercial Acumen: Understanding of sales processes, small business or entrepreneurial environments, and e-commerce dynamics.
• Problem Solving & Escalation Management: Skilled in addressing challenges, finding solutions, and resolving disputes or escalations quickly and professionally.
• Communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to tailor messages to different audiences (from Personal Shoppers to program leadership).
• Analytical & Reporting: Ability to analyze KPIs, survey data, and team metrics to drive decisions and improve performance.
• Process Improvement: Aptitude for continuously refining processes, championing best practices, and implementing feedback from the field.
• Digital Literacy: Comfortable with e-commerce platforms, digital tools, and remote collaboration technologies.
• Cultural Competence & Empathy: Sensitivity to local contexts, inclusivity, and strong interpersonal skills to support community members of varying 

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, communications, marketing, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
• 3+ years’ experience in community management, customer engagement, sales team leadership, or a related field
• Proven track record managing and developing teams in a fast-paced environment
• Experience working in e-commerce, digital platforms, or supporting small business entrepreneurship is highly desirable
• Demonstrated success with onboarding, training, and performance management
• Strong understanding of underserved markets and building trust with diverse communities
• Familiarity with analyzing KPIs and using data to inform decision-making
• Experience implementing feedback loops, reporting, and process improvement
• Background in customer service is advantageous

The Environment:

• takealot.com employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer-centric, fun and have the shared ambition of takealot.com being the leading e-commerce company in Africa.
• We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve.
• We are short on ego and high on output.
• We are doers and not only thinkers, it's all in the execution after all.
• We love what we do and what we are creating.

We seek to Employ an Extra Ordinary Mind who:

• is respectful but forthright
• is an expert at doing, who can not only design but also execute
• is analytical, able to use data to make decisions
• is competitive, self-directed and strive to be the BEST (GREAT requires a lot of work and does not only happen during business hours)
• is passionate about the potential of e-commerce and delivering a world-class customer experience
• is entrepreneurial, thrives under change and accepts it is a constant and always looks for solutions to do something better and faster
• is business SMART. Able to think about problems from a business perspective using technical and product input;
• is curious and challenge the status quo
• is innovative and enjoys iteration
• is collaborative
• will be at the cutting edge of developing new concepts for takealot.com
• thinks like an owner of the business
• is SMART, has INTEGRITY and is HARD WORKING

If you meet the above you are an Extraordinary Mind so come and join us!

Takealot is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applicants from the previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities, to apply.