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...
We’re looking for an experienced portfolio manager with excellent analytical skills to help us grow our Financial Services products, inclusive of consumer and merchant lending, savings and insurance. Many of these products are new to market, and you will play a key role in evaluating performance and identifying growth opportunities. For our lending products, you will be a creative thinker developing iterative credit risk frameworks enabling Wave to responsibly provide funding to our customers.
In this role, you'll;
- Work to maximize the growth and profitability of Wave’s consumer and merchant Financial Service products across our markets
- Deeply understand customer usage and behavior towards the product suite, to generate insights which can be actioned into growth opportunities, across the customer lifecycle from acquisition to retention.
- Turn insight into action by experimenting and testing and rapidly scaling successful pilots, in partnership with product, marketing and growth team
- Create frameworks to track and monitor key performance indicators and identify trends that impact on business performance
- For the lending portfolio, ensure we optimize our approach both underwriting (who to lend to) and line assignment (how much to lend)
- Rigorously deep dive into performance of each lending product, against a full KPI scorecard - driving root analysis of what is working well, and what needs to be optimized
- Identify relevant data sources to support risk modeling, in markets where traditional sources such as credit risk bureaus are often limited
- Develop collections and recovery strategies
- Monitor and track market and macroeconomic trends
- This is a remote position and can work remotely from anywhere (between UTC -5 and +4) with reliable Internet access.
- Our salaries are competitive and are calculated using a transparent formula. For this role, depending on your level and location, we offer a salary of $142,000 - $203,300 USD, paid in your local currency equivalent plus 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 fully paid parental leave and subsidized fertility assistance
- Unlimited vacation with a 20-day minimum requirement
- $10,000 annual charitable donation matching
- 8+ years of experience in lending in a portfolio management, credit risk or commercial management position, in a financial services or fintech company
- Experience in other financial products such as savings, insurance or payments is a strong advantage
- Excellent data analysis and interpretation skills
- Have a proven ability to create, implement and monitor credit risk strategies, with experience of using non-traditional data sources to create credit decisioning frameworks
- Track record operating across multiple markets or regions
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
- Have an inquisitive mindset, using data to seek insights, and able to create hypothesis where data is not available
- Enjoy working at pace, and are able to iterate and test quickly
- Are highly articulate, able to communicate complex ideas and insights
- Can operate with ambiguity and adjust quickly to changing priorities and conditions
- Have strong commercial acumen, capable of identifying trade-offs
- Are passionate about creating responsible financial solutions that can enhance customers lives
- Have a proven ability to create, implement and monitor credit risk strategies
- Have a strong sense of ownership and seek to achieve excellence in everything you do
- 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.
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.
Similar Jobs
What you need to know about the San Francisco Tech Scene
Key Facts About San Francisco Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 365,500; 13.9% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Google, Apple, Salesforce, Meta
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, fintech, consumer technology, software
- Funding Landscape: $50.5 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins
- Research Centers and Universities: Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; University of San Francisco; Santa Clara University; Ames Research Center; Center for AI Safety; California Institute for Regenerative Medicine
