Senior Software Engineer

Our mission

We're making Africa the first cashless continent.

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.

We're solving this problem 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 August 2019, we expanded to Cote d'Ivoire. Now, we're enabling millions of payments a month and expanding across the continent. And 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 in the following countries: US, Canada, Belgium, Germany, UK, Ghana, Cote D'Ivoire, Kenya, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Uganda or Senegal. 
• 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.
• Our salaries are competitive and are calculated using a transparent formula. For this role, we are offering a salary range of $108,000 -$170,000 depending on your level and location
• 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 assistanceUnlimited vacation with a 20-day minimum requirement$10,000 annual charitable donation matching
• 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

• Reflexively ask yourself, “is this code the best way to make my users happy?”
• 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.
• 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.

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 mentored by a senior engineer on the team.
• 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: GraphQLandroid frontend: Kotlin/JetpackiOS frontend: Swift/SwiftUIweb frontend: TypeScript/Reactdatabase: Postgresinfrastructure: GCP / Terraformorchestration: Kubernetes
• 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're a team of 300+ Senegalese, 100+ Ivorian and 60+ remote people who are deeply passionate about our mission of bringing great financial services to the people who need them most.
• We foster autonomy for our employees. You'll learn to 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 Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and the cofounders of PayPal.