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. We’re looking for an IT Operations Director who is a strong communicator and excited about getting things done. Wave has operations in seven countries in Africa, is expanding into several more, and also has a remote employee population spanning dozens of countries. Our IT and Telephony Operations team is the first point of contact for our 2500 employees on issues related to hardware, software, access management, and technical troubleshooting. As the IT Director you will set the team’s strategic direction, manage our hybrid team of nearly 20 employees, establish metric-driven dashboards to drive process improvements, and ensure there are clearly defined processes for cross-team procedures such as hardware lifecycle management and SaaS management. In this role, you'll; Define the IT and Telephony team’s strategy and objectives, including but not limited to: Lead the IT and Telephony operations team spanning 20 countries of hire, 7 countries of operation and 2500 employees who are primarily office-based in West African countries. Manage strategic stakeholder relationships across the company, including with select members of the executive team such as the CTO, in addition to country and operational leads. Ensure IT policies and processes are developed from first principles and thoughtfully integrate with Engineering, Compliance, and People Operation requirements. Scope of work includes network and asset management, policy creation and implementation, full lifecycle project management, quality control, change management, onboarding/offboarding, defining technical training for Wave employees, and access management. Manage strategic stakeholder relationships across the company, including with select members of the executive team such as the CTO, in addition to country and operational leads. Ensure IT policies and processes are developed from first principles and thoughtfully integrate with Engineering, Compliance, and People Operation requirements. Define and improve metrics on IT’s areas of responsibility, including but not limited to IT and telephony network and services, technical onboarding of employees, asset management, IT and Infosec training. Partner with Engineering to rollout processes and policies related to Information Security management, such as yearly ISO/IEC 27001. Partner closely with departments such as Product, Engineering, Field Operations and People Operations to determine their hardware and access management needs and translate these requests into team deliverables. Own vendor relationship for IT tooling and those delegated by other departments, ensuring relationship management, ensuring cost-efficient practices and contract management. Make innovative and effective system and technology investment decisions. Identify the need for upgrades, configurations or new systems and report to upper management. Key Details Wave covers travel once per year to one of our operating countries in Africa, as well as a yearly stipend of $1200 to meet with coworkers. For this role specifically there are higher initial travel expectations detailed below. This role involves participating in an on-call rotation. Our salaries are competitive and are calculated using a transparent formula. For this role, depending on your experience, we offer a competitive salary, plus a generous equity package. Major benefits: Subsidised 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 Flexible vacation, with most folks taking between 30-40 days per year $10,000 annual charitable donation matching Requirements 10 years extensive experience in information technology or a related field. 8 years’ experience managing teams in information technology or adjacent departments: Demonstrated experience managing teams during re-orgs. Demonstrated experience managing a globally distributed team with operations in emerging markets with language and cultural differences. Experience managing Mac OS environments and tools such as Jamf, Jira, Monday, and Google Workspace, Chromebook, Mobile Device Fleet Management, Slack, Zoom, Confluence. Demonstrated experience decreasing operational budget spend through vendor management, tooling integrations, and/or workflow automations. Demonstrated experience managing IT services for at least 2,000 hybrid (remote and office-based) employee populations, or companies with at least 4,000 assets. Experience working in a startup or rapid growth environment. Willing to travel internationally at least 20% the first year, and at least 3 times per year after that, but more is preferred. Fluent in English You might be a good fit if you Speak French, or are interested in learning it. Are embarrassingly honest, low ego, love working with multinational colleagues and users, and are excited about Wave’s mission. Are able to do gritty, hands on work but also know when and how to delegate effectively. Can communicate clearly with colleagues who work and think differently. Are intellectually curious and creative in the way you go about tackling problems. Can fluidly describe complex technical problems to a non-technical audience. Can demonstrate iterative thinking. Have hands-on experience in a helpdesk environment (providing end user support, training clients, managing software or server deployments) and in scaling helpdesk environments across user populations that increase in size (headcount) and complexity (countries).