Product Manager

About the job

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

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.

At Wave, Product Managers

• Lead cross-functional teams with full ownership of their product domain
• Define product goals, metrics, and roadmaps based on user needs and mission impact
• Drive user research, especially in-market across Africa user understanding with both in-person research and data-driven perspectives
• Write clear, compelling design docs and facilitate async, fast-moving decision-making
• Over-communicate context, priorities, and decisions to ensure team alignment
• Adjust priorities quickly based on feedback, experiments, or new learnings
• Solve problems holistically, whether through product features, ops tooling or process changes 
• Champion our users and hold us accountable to meeting them where they are
  
  
  

In this Role, you'll...

• Own a product or feature holistically, including any internal tooling needed to support it. 
• Relentlessly gather feedback (by talking to users and looking at data) to deeply understand the problem space and our users' needs.
• Work from first principles to understand the user's biggest problems and then figure out how the product should work to solve those problems.
• Prioritize the biggest problems blocking the product's growth and impact.
• Directly manage a small product team to get the improvements into users' hands in rapid iteration cycles, gather more feedback and reach more people.
  
  
  

Key Details

• This is a fully remote role. Candidates must be based in one of our talent hub countries (UK, Spain, USA, Canada, Kenya and Ghana) or in one of our operating markets in Africa including Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, or Burkina Faso
• Wave provides a yearly $1,200 stipend to support coworking meetups with teammates.
• Remote team members are expected to travel to our operational markets (e.g. Senegal or Côte d'Ivoire) at least once per quarter. Exceptions apply, but we’ve found this key to understanding our users and product.
• Our salaries are competitive and are calculated using a transparent formula. For this role, depending on your level and location, we offer a salary between $142,200 - $181,400 USD, plus a generous equity package.
• 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.
• Major benefits:

• Subsidised health insurance for you and your dependents, and retirement contributions (both vary from country to country).
• 6 months of fully paid parental leave and subsidised fertility assistance.
• Flexible vacation, with most folks taking between 21-30 days per year. 
• $10,000 annual charitable donation matching.

 You might be a good fit if you

• Are a strong communicator that can inspire and lead by influence.
• Are great at coordinating across teams and excel at communicating across multiple cultures.
• Have a good nose for user-focused product design and obsess over user experience.
• Take ownership for outcomes and do whatever you can to make them close to inevitable.
• Have strong instincts for asking questions that could move the needle.
• Have the courage and persistence to replan when feedback or new information arrives.
• Always listen with empathy but ruthlessly prioritise based on impact.
• Are excited about travel and meet users where they are — your users will be in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and other countries in Africa, and some travel will be essential.
  
  
  

Requirement 

• 5+ years of experience in product management, ideally in high-ownership fast-paced environments like scale-ups or startups.
• Proven success in overseeing all elements of the product development lifecycle, such as user research, design, implementation and evaluation
• Speak fluent English
• Bonus if you

• Speak at least conversational French
• Have professional experience in a consumer fintech company
• Are a mobile money user in Sub-Saharan Africa

 You might be a good fit if you

•  Resonate deeply with how we do product and have experience working that way. 
• Are a strong communicator that can inspire and lead by influence.
• Are great at coordinating across teams and excel at communicating across multiple cultures.
• Have a good nose for user-focused product design and obsess over user experience.
• Take ownership for outcomes and do whatever you can to make them close to inevitable.
• Have strong instincts for asking questions that could move the needle.
• Have the courage and persistence to replan when feedback or new information arrives.
• Always listen with empathy but ruthlessly prioritize based on impact.
• Are excited about travel and meet users where they are — your users will be in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and other countries in Africa, and some travel will be essential.
  
  
  

About Product at Wave

Product has always been very important to us at Wave, starting from day one with two very strong product-minded founders. Product Managers play a central role in our organization, impacting large chunks of the company around them, similar to the founders they were shaped after years ago.

Our approach to building products may not be what you’ve seen in other places. Our processes are lightweight, informed by principles instead of methodologies and our PMs don’t just manage backlogs full of polished tickets. Read our write-up on product at Wave!

If you’re excited to own a real problem end-to-end, set your own goals, and guide a team toward outcomes that matter for real people, you’ll feel right at home here.

If that’s you, we’d love to meet you.

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