Project Lead

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

To achieve our mission, Wave partners with a range of organizations to enable seamless payments for essential services. As a Payments Projects Lead, you’ll play a central role in driving large, complex, cross-functional initiatives at the intersection of Product and Payments. This includes owning end-to-end delivery of strategic projects, such as B2B initiatives, while collaborating closely with internal teams and working extensively with both field and corporate partners.

In this role, you'll;

• Own the end-to-end management of complex, cross-functional ops project to scale payments for new products and partners .

• Take complete ownership of critical ops projects, making sure we communicate and address every blocker we encounter.

• Drive these projects fast, through close collaboration and great communication with our product teams and our corporate and informal merchant facing ops teams.

• Take great notes and keep project docs live and up to date at all times, so we can work asynchronously and across borders without delay.

• Talk to users, corporate partners and informal merchants in the field, asking probing questions to get insights and clarify blockers.

• Be a problem solver, think out of the box and be proactive.

Key details

• Location: You'll work from our office in Dakar and may travel to field locations.

• Work authorization in Senegal.

• This is a permanent position.

• Our salaries are competitive and calculated using a transparent formula.

• We offer generous health insurance for yourself and your dependents.

• We support working parents - we offer 26 weeks of parental leave for mothers and 4 weeks for fathers, in addition to subsidized child care when they return to work.

• Airtime reimbursement.

• Free food and a beautiful office space.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in retail sectors and/or FMCG, ideally with a background in project management or consulting.

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Project Management, Business Administration, or a related field, with strong knowledge of fintech, mobile money, banking, or payments.

• Proven experience managing large, complex and cross-functional projects.

• Strong communication skills in English and French, with experience collaborating across internal teams and external partners.

• Highly organized and detail-oriented, able to track multiple projects in a fast-changing environment.

• Proactive problem solver, able to identify risks, raise blockers, and drive projects to completion.

• Analytics skills.

You might be a good fit if you

• Enjoy collaborating and communicating with multiple stakeholders.

• Have strong interpersonal skills as you will interact with a variety of stakeholders, both internal and external.

• Love owning projects end-to-end, you work autonomously but know when to escalate issues to internal teams or external partners.

• Are skilled at managing multiple projects simultaneously and keeping track of shifting priorities,

• Adapt quickly to changing conditions and priorities.

• Are resourceful and curious, finding ways to make things work.

• Ask questions proactively, request clarifications, and follow up regularly to ensure progress.

• Are data-driven and a critical thinker with basic technical aptitude.

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.