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 2017, we launched a mobile app in Senegal for cash deposit, withdrawal, and peer-to-peer and business payments. Now, we have millions of users across six countries 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

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 experienced Data Scientist and help grow and strengthen our user base. You’ll work on high-impact use cases with millions of users, such as optimizing our existing scratch card rewards program or designing and launching entirely new initiatives from scratch.
The technical challenges range from crafting simple heuristics when data is sparse to applying advanced techniques like geospatial analytics, network analysis, and uplift modeling. You’ll own the full cycle: defining the right approach, implementing it, and shipping it in production.
This role is highly experimentation-driven: you’ll be able to rapidly test ideas, learn from real user feedback, and iterate quickly.
We’re looking for someone who is product-minded, hands-on, and pragmatic: a data scientist who sees beyond models and algorithms and thinks deeply about how data connects to intuitive user behavior and real-world impact.

In this role you’ll:

• Be part of a multidisciplinary team, working with engineers, data analysts, economists and a product manager.
• Focus on advanced analytics and machine learning problems, delivering them end-to-end independently.
• Prioritise work and shape your own approach in a way that maximises the positive impact on both users and the business.
• Engage not just with business metrics, but also collaborate closely with Operations teams to understand the real-world outcomes and impact of your work.

REQUIREMENTS

• Education and Experience
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• Minimum Bachelor’s degree in a quantitative field such as Statistics, Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline. A Master’s or PhD is a plus.

• 4+ years experience in applied data science or similar experience.
• Demonstrated experience with data analysis, machine learning and product A/B tests.
• Experience in using advanced analytics for optimising targeting, rewards or incentive programs is a big plus.
• Technical skills
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• Proficiency in applying machine learning methods to solve business problems.

• Very strong Python skills with expertise in data manipulation, analysis and machine learning. Must be comfortable writing code that runs in production.
• Competent in SQL.
• Solid foundation in probability and statistics.

• Be part of a multidisciplinary team, working with engineers, data analysts, economists and a product manager.
• Focus on advanced analytics and machine learning problems, delivering them end-to-end independently.
• Prioritise work and shape your own approach in a way that maximises the positive impact on both users and the business.
• Engage not just with business metrics, but also collaborate closely with Operations teams to understand the real-world outcomes and impact of your work