Our mission

The problem: 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.

How we're solving it: We're building financial services to work as they should: no account fees, instantly available and accepted everywhere. In places where electricity, water and roads don't always function, we're creating financial infrastructure that "just works." In fall 2017, we launched a mobile app in Senegal for cash deposit, withdrawal, and peer-to-peer and business payments; we're now processing over 200k payments every month. Our goal is to make Africa the first cashless continent, starting with Senegal. That's where you come in...

How you'll help us achieve it

We’re looking for an experienced engineer who’s independent, excited about getting things done and ready to hit the ground running. 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 for users, to helping the customer support team resolve problems. 

Our to-do list changes constantly, but here are some recent projects:

• Allowing people to pay their electricity bills with Wave, by integrating with Senelec, the national electrical utility.

• Building an app for business owners to pay their employees' salaries using Wave.

• Letting us safely lend smartphones to thousands of taxi drivers so they can accept payments with Wave, by building software to manage the phones and discourage theft.

Key Details

• You can work remotely from anywhere (between UTC -8 and +4) with reliable Internet access

• Our team meets in Senegal every two months for retreats, which are one week in length. Wave covers all costs associated with travel to and from Senegal.

• Salaries are calculated using a transparent formula. Salary for this role ranges between $120,000 to $155,000.

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

Requirements

• Minimum of 4 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.

• Native or fluent English.

You might be a good fit if you

• Are excited to deeply understand the inner workings of the tools you use.

• Push through hard problems without giving up.

• Are not afraid to take on complicated systems.

• Reflexively ask yourself, “how will this code change affect my users?”

• 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.

Our team

We're a team of ~130 people (90 Senegalese and 40 International) who are deeply passionate about our mission of bringing great financial services to the people who need them most.

We foster autonomy for engineers. We have no project managers—you'll learn to own your own projects at every stage, from understanding the project to monitoring your solution in production.

We prize focus: we try to cut out all non-essential distractions so that you can spend as much time in the zone as possible. Aside from two weekly meetings—an all-hands and a one-on-one with your manager—your schedule is yours.

We care deeply about code quality. We do thorough design and code reviews, and frequently budget time for internal code improvement projects.

Our stack (note that we will train you on all of these—you don't need any prior experience): We have a Python 3 (+ mypy) backend, GraphQL API and Android (Kotlin) frontend, backed by a Postgres database. Our infrastructure is on GCP, managed with Kubernetes and Terraform. Learn more about engineering at Wave: https://wave.engineering/

We’re backed by world-class investors including Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and the cofounders of PayPal.

How to apply

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. If interested, please submit a resume as well as a cover letter describing your interest in Wave and the role.

Wave is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.