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 six 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
Wave is now the largest financial institution in Senegal, with over 7 million users. And, we’re still in the early days of our product roadmap and potential impact on people’s everyday lives.
We’re looking for an IT Operations Director who is a strong communicator and excited about getting things done. Wave has operations in seven countries in Africa, is expanding into several more, and also has a remote employee population spanning dozens of countries.
Our IT and Telephony Operations team is the first point of contact for our 2500+ employees on issues related to hardware, software, access management, and technical troubleshooting. As the IT Director you will set the team’s strategic direction, manage our hybrid team of nearly 20 employees, establish metric-driven dashboards to drive process improvements, and ensure there are clearly defined processes for cross-team procedures such as hardware lifecycle management and SaaS management.
In this role, you'll;
- Define the IT and Telephony team’s strategy and objectives, including but not limited to:
- Lead the IT and Telephony operations team spanning 20+ countries of hire, 7+ countries of operation and +2500 employees who are primarily office-based in West African countries.
- Manage strategic stakeholder relationships across the company, including with select members of the executive team such as the CTO, in addition to country and operational leads.
- Ensure IT policies and processes are developed from first principles and thoughtfully integrate with Engineering, Compliance, and People Operation requirements.
- Lead the IT and Telephony operations team spanning 20+ countries of hire, 7+ countries of operation and +2500 employees who are primarily office-based in West African countries.
- Scope of work includes network and asset management, policy creation and implementation, full lifecycle project management, quality control, change management, onboarding/offboarding, defining technical training for Wave employees, and access management.
- Manage strategic stakeholder relationships across the company, including with select members of the executive team such as the CTO, in addition to country and operational leads.
- Ensure IT policies and processes are developed from first principles and thoughtfully integrate with Engineering, Compliance, and People Operation requirements.
- Define and improve metrics on IT’s areas of responsibility, including but not limited to IT and telephony network and services, technical onboarding of employees, asset management, IT and Infosec training.
- Partner with Engineering to rollout processes and policies related to Information Security management, such as yearly ISO/IEC 27001.
- Partner closely with departments such as Product, Engineering, Field Operations and People Operations to determine their hardware and access management needs and translate these requests into team deliverables.
- Own vendor relationship for IT tooling and those delegated by other departments, ensuring relationship management, ensuring cost-efficient practices and contract management.
- Make innovative and effective system and technology investment decisions.
- Identify the need for upgrades, configurations or new systems and report to upper management.
Key Details
- Wave covers travel once per year to one of our operating countries in Africa, as well as a yearly stipend of $1200 to meet with coworkers. For this role specifically there are higher initial travel expectations detailed below.
- We run performance reviews twice a year and award bonuses or promotions to strong performers who have been with the company for more than six months.
- This role involves participating in an on-call rotation.
- Our salaries are competitive and are calculated using a transparent formula. For this role, depending on your experience, we offer a competitive salary, plus a generous equity package.
- Major benefits:
- Subsidised health insurance for you and your dependents and retirement contributions (both vary from country to country
- 6 months fully paid parental leave and subsidized fertility assistance
- Flexible vacation, with most folks taking between 30-40 days per year
- $10,000 annual charitable donation matching
Requirements
- 10 years extensive experience in information technology or a related field.
- 8+ years’ experience managing teams in information technology or adjacent departments:
- Demonstrated experience managing teams during re-orgs.
- Demonstrated experience managing a globally distributed team with operations in emerging markets with language and cultural differences.
- Experience managing Mac OS environments and tools such as Jamf, Jira, Monday, and Google Workspace, Chromebook, Mobile Device Fleet Management, Slack, Zoom, Confluence.
- Demonstrated experience decreasing operational budget spend through vendor management, tooling integrations, and/or workflow automations.
- Demonstrated experience managing IT services for at least 2,000 hybrid (remote and office-based) employee populations, or companies with at least 4,000 assets.
- Experience working in a startup or rapid growth environment.
- Willing to travel internationally at least 20% the first year, and at least 3 times per year after that, but more is preferred.
- Fluent in English
You might be a good fit if you
- Speak French, or are interested in learning it.
- Are embarrassingly honest, low ego, love working with multinational colleagues and users, and are excited about Wave’s mission.
- Are able to do gritty, hands on work but also know when and how to delegate effectively.
- Can communicate clearly with colleagues who work and think differently.
- Are intellectually curious and creative in the way you go about tackling problems.
- Can fluidly describe complex technical problems to a non-technical audience.
- Can demonstrate iterative thinking.
- Have hands-on experience in a helpdesk environment (providing end user support, training clients, managing software or server deployments) and in scaling helpdesk environments across user populations that increase in size (headcount) and complexity (countries).
- We have a rapidly growing in-country team in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, and Uganda, 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.
What We Do
We're making Africa the first cashless continent.
In 2017, nearly 60% of adults 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 November 2017, we launched a mobile app in Senegal for cash deposit, withdrawal, and peer-to-peer and business payments. In 2019, we expanded to Cote D'Ivoire. Now, we have millions of users and are growing fast.
Our goal is to drive financial inclusion and make Africa the first cashless continent
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