General Manager, Growth

Our mission

We're making Africa the first cashless continent.

In 2017, over half the population in Sub-Saharan Africa had no bank account. That's for good reason—the fees are too high, the closest branch can be miles away, and nobody takes cards. Without access to financial institutions, people are forced to keep their savings under the mattress. Small business owners rely on lenders who charge extortionate rates. Parents spend hours waiting in line to pay school fees in cash.

We're solving this by building financial services that just work: no account fees, instantly available, and accepted everywhere. In places where electricity, water and roads don't always work, you can still send money with Wave. In 2017, we launched a mobile app in Senegal for cash deposit, withdrawal, and peer-to-peer and business payments. Now, we have millions of users across 9 countries and are growing fast.

Our goal is to make Africa the first cashless continent and that's where you come in...

How you'll help us achieve it

As General Manager, Growth, you'll be responsible for driving Wave’s customer growth for our core mobile money business in our newer, growth stage markets. You'll work closely with the CEO to set growth strategy, lead local teams, and ensure we’re hitting ambitious growth goals. This is a highly cross-functional role. You'll work closely with operations, product, marketing and other teams to iterate on strategies to increase our growth rates in already fast growing markets. You will need to combine strategic thinking, data-driven decision-making, and strong execution to unlock the next stage of growth in our newer markets.

As our General Manager of Growth, you'll

• Create and execute plans to grow our core mobile money business in newer markets. This will mainly focus on operational excellence with in-country teams, but also involve coordination with product, finance & marketing.

• Deeply understand your users: gather insights, test hypotheses, and turn learnings into scalable growth tactics and then execute on those lessons at a country level.

• Use data and experimentation to test, learn, and scale growth initiatives quickly.

• Spend time in Wave markets visiting users and in-country teams. Work closely with those teams to drive operational excellence on scaling strategies.

• Initiate creative local marketing strategies and user growth campaigns.

• Manage a rapidly growing team across multiple markets and continue to build the team out by attracting the best talent across all functions.

• Manage both business KPIs and the P&Ls for growing markets in close coordination with the CEO.

Key Details

• This is a remote role, open to candidates based across our Talent Hubs (US East Coast, Canada, Spain, UK, Kenya, Ghana) and our operating countries (e.g. Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire etc.),

• Travel to operating markets is required 1-2 times per quarter, with more travel required upfront during the onboarding period.

• Wave provides a yearly $1,200 stipend to support coworking meetups with teammates.

• Our salaries are competitive and it includes a generous equity package.

• Major benefits:

• Subsidized health insurance for you and your dependents and retirement contributions (both vary from country to country).

• 6 months of fully paid parental leave and subsidized fertility assistance.

• Flexible vacation, with most folks taking between 21-30 days exclusive of statutory holidays.

• $10,000 annual charitable donation matching.

Requirements

• At least 10 years of proven success leading a team that has scaled a consumer product in an emerging market.

• Strong analytical skills: comfortable with data, metrics, and experimentation.

• Exceptional leadership and people management skills: you’ve built and grown high-performing teams.

• Excellent communication skills in English. French is a strong plus.

• Passion for Wave’s mission of financial inclusion and the grit to thrive in fast-changing environments.

You might be a good fit if you

• Build strong relationships and bring out the best in people.

• Excel at leadership and enjoy managing diverse teams.

• Are metrics oriented and experienced in leading teams towards KPIs.

• Communicate effectively and often, both in writing and in-person, to the point of over-communication.

• Think from first principles about how things should work.

• Are excessively detail-oriented and seek to achieve excellence in everything you do.

• Are a self-starter and proactive about achieving ambitious targets.

• Willing to go the distance to get something done.

• Adjust quickly to changing priorities and conditions.

Our team

• We have a rapidly growing in-country team in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Uganda, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon plus remote team members spread across the world.

• We're deeply passionate about our mission of bringing radically affordable financial services to the people who need them most.

• We foster autonomy for our employees. You'll own your projects at every stage, from understanding the problem to monitoring your solution in production.

• We raised the largest Series A in Africa in 2021. Our world-class investors, include Founders Fund, Sequoia Heritage, Stripe, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, and Partech Africa.

• We are on Y Combinator's top companies by revenue.

How to apply

Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English and a cover letter describing your interest in Wave and the role.

We review applications frequently and recommend that you apply to the role that most closely aligns with your skills, experience and career goals.

Wave is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.