Chief Technology Officer, Wave
$303-356.5k
+ equity
Financial services for underbanked communities
Be an early applicant
Financial services for underbanked communities
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$303-356.5k
+ equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To make Africa the first cashless continent.
Role
Who you are
- You've managed an engineering organization of at least~100 people, including managers who manage others. You can describe how your own job changed as the org grew
- You have a software engineering background and are good at it. You can still read code and follow a technical argument to the end
- You've been accountable for a system where failure was expensive: money, safety, or regulated data
- You've hired senior engineering leaders, and you've moved someone out of a role that wasn't working. You can talk about both honestly
- You write well. Clear, short, and persuasive, for readers who aren't engineers
- You have an actual point of view on AI in engineering: something you've tried, changed, or abandoned, not a plan to look into it
- You believe in what we're building and can say why without being prompted
What the job involves
- We're looking for a CTO who wants to own engineering end to end: the systems, the people, and the standards for a company whose work changes lives
- Keep us fast as we get bigger: We deliberately favor fewer processes, simple designs, and deeply understood tools, because that's what lets a small team operate a system this important. Your job is to protect that as the headcount grows and ensure more ownership per engineer, and a clear view of where complexity is genuinely worth it
- Own reliability: Wave is the financial system for millions of people who have no alternative. You'll set the standards for uptime, incident response, and how carefully we change things that move money and you'll be accountable when we fall short
- Build and lead the leadership layer: You'll inherit 5 direct reports and an engineering organization of ~132 people including security, data and infrastructure. The CISO will also be reporting to you. You will be responsible for hiring, developing, and where necessary replacing engineering managers and directors. You'll be personally involved in senior hiring
- Set our vision on AI. We're already shipping AI in production as autonomous voice and digital agents handle over 10 million customer interactions a month across West Africa and we're building tooling so engineers can use coding agents safely inside a large Python monolith. You’ll help us be truly AI forward, not just a pragmatic adopter
- Support expansion. Wave is growing fast, and each new market brings new challenges and constraints. You’ll help us plan the right architecture and organisational structure to help us grow smoothly and consistently
- Represent engineering to the company. Wave is unusually transparent: everyone sees monthly update from our CEO. You'll write clearly about what engineering is doing and why, to an audience that includes engineers, non-engineers, our leadership team, and, when needed, our regulators
- Reports to: Drew Durbin, CEO
- Team: Around ~132 engineers across 5 teams (Payment, User-facing products, Internal, non-product teams and platform) plus 5 leaders. Engineering teams are co-led by a product manager and an engineering manager. Data science and analytics sits in the engineering organization; corporate IT does not for now
- Stack: Python 3 with mypy on the backend, GraphQL API layer, Postgres and Redis, Kotlin/Jetpack on Android (our main client), Swift/SwiftUI on iOS, TypeScript and React on the web. Infrastructure on GCP, managed with Kubernetes and Terraform. Most backend work happens in a large Python monolith, deployed across multi-country architecture. Current in-flight work includes agentic developer tooling, a large scale migration of our databases, and some refactoring of our monolith
Application process
- The process runs up to 5 conversations, including 2 technical discussions. We want this to be a 2-way assessment: as much a chance for you to evaluate us as for us to get to know you. Along the way you'll meet our CEO, Head of People, Head of Product, both Engineering Directors, and a senior leader from one of our markets
Our take
Because of things like high fees and a lack of local branches, about half of the adults in Africa still do not have a bank account. Although this is an improvement on past estimates, the continent is still significantly underbanked - which is what Wave helps to combat.
Wave addresses this banking gap with technology, offering a straightforward and cost-effective tool accessible via mobile. The impact has been substantial. A 2021 GSMA report suggested over 500 million mobile money accounts were registered in Africa, facilitating transactions valued at nearly $500 billion.
Wave has already established its presence in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Gambia and Mali, using steady investment to expand its footprint and reach unicorn status. It also continues to enhance product development and engineering efforts, as well as shore up business operations. Despite challenger companies emerging, Wave has a considerable head start on the competition.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
9% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Mar 2022
$10m
LATE VC
Sep 2021
$200m
SERIES A
Total funding: $210.2m
Company benefits
- Subsidised health insurance for you and your dependents (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
- Retirement contributions (vary from country to country)
- Yearly travel to one of our African operating countries
Company HQ
Mermoz Sacre-coeur, Dakar, Dakar Region
Leadership
Drew Durbin
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously co-founder and CEO at Sendwave (International Remittance).
Lincoln Quirk
(Co-Founder)Previously co-founder and CTO at Newsbrane, Engineer at Demiurge Studios and co-founder of Sendwave (International Remittance).
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