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 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 make Africa the first cashless continent and that's where you come in.....
How you'll help us achieve it
We’re looking for an engineer who’s independent and excited about getting things done. You'll be responsible for building and improving the ways people pay with Wave. You'll own every step of the process: from understanding the problem to shipping your solution to users to helping the customer support team resolve problems.
Our to-do list changes constantly, but here are some recent projects:
- Enabling people to use their Wave app to pay for products in stores.
- Allowing people to pay their electricity bills with Wave by integrating with electrical utility companies.
- Building an app for business owners to pay their employees' salaries using Wave.
- Allowing people to pay for their transportation on taxis, trains & buses.
Key details
- You can work remotely from anywhere (between UTC -5 and +4) with reliable internet access.
- Wave covers travel once per year to one of our operating countries in Africa, as well as a yearly stipend of $800 to meet with coworkers.
- Our salaries are competitive and are calculated using a transparent formula. For this role, depending on your level, we offer a salary of $118,600 -$138,400 USD, plus a generous equity
- 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:
- 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 30-40 days per year.
- $10,000 annual charitable donation matching.
- Yearly travel to one of our African operating countries.
Requirements
- Minimum of 5 years of professional experience as a software engineer. There's no need to have previous experience with our stack if you are willing to learn.
- Fluent in English.
You might be a good fit if you
- Reflexively ask yourself, “is this code the best way to make my users happy?”
- Want to learn to solve hard problems and aren’t afraid to ask for help when you get stuck.
- Are excited to learn about complex systems.
- Can communicate clearly with colleagues who work, speak and think differently.
- Work to make things easier for the next engineer who will touch your code.
- Always try to improve as a programmer and colleague.
- Are excited to deeply understand the inner workings of the tools you use.
About engineering at Wave
- You'll join an autonomous, cross-functional team focused on a single area of Wave's product. Each team is led by a Product Manager and an Engineering Manager.
- We organize projects to give you as much ownership as possible. Typically, you'll be responsible for a feature or improvement end-to-end, from design through deployment.
- Our stack (note that we will train you on any of these—you don't need any prior experience):
- backend: Python 3 (+ mypy)
- API layer: GraphQL
- android frontend: Kotlin/Jetpack
- iOS frontend: Swift/SwiftUI
- web frontend: TypeScript/React
- database: Postgres
- infrastructure: GCP / Terraform
- orchestration: Kubernetes
Our team
- We have a rapidly growing in-country team in Senegal, Côte D'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, 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 own projects at every stage, from understanding the problem to monitoring your solution in production.
- We’re backed by world-class investors including Founders Fund, Sequoia Heritage, Stripe, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator and Partech Africa.
How to apply
Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English.
Optional: Please feel free to add a cover letter or note if there is anything additional that you would like to share about your interest in Wave/the role or your experience. We review applications on a rolling basis.
Wave is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.