Engineering Manager - DevEx

About Wave

Wave’s mission is to make Africa the first cashless continent. The company was built to remove the friction that keeps people from using financial services: high fees, long travel to branches, and cash-only systems. Since launching its mobile app in Senegal in 2017 for cash deposits, withdrawals, peer-to-peer payments, and business payments, Wave has expanded to millions of users across 9 countries and continues to grow quickly.

Role overview

As the Engineering Manager for DevEx, you will lead the developer experience function so engineers have the tools and processes needed to deliver changes quickly and safely. The team is responsible for making internal development smoother while balancing speed, reliability, compliance, security, and incident prevention. You will also help shape how AI-assisted development is introduced, using it only where it genuinely reduces repetitive work or improves quality.

What you will do

• Set priorities for the DevEx team in partnership with senior engineers, the Director of Platform, and engineering leadership.
• Coach and mentor team members so they grow as engineers and as collaborators.
• Operate the internal developer platform like a product by gathering feedback, running surveys, tracking usage, and prioritizing work by user impact.
• Lead the full development workflow, from local coding through to safe production rollout across multiple countries.
• Assess AI-enabled development tools and adoption opportunities with a practical lens.

Why this role may fit you

• You want your work to have a direct social impact by helping deliver reliable and affordable financial services to millions of people.
• You prefer straightforward, maintainable architecture over flashy technology choices.
• You enjoy working in a mission-aligned environment where collaboration across teams is easy and purposeful.

Location and working setup

This position is remote and can be performed from anywhere within UTC -1 to UTC +3, provided you have reliable internet access and the right to work. You must also be willing to travel to Africa once per year for a one-week immersion trip; Wave covers the full cost. The role includes participation in an on-call rotation.

Compensation and benefits

Wave offers a competitive salary that is determined through a transparent formula. Depending on your experience and location, compensation can reach up to $185,800 per year or the local equivalent, along with a generous equity package.

• Subsidized health insurance for you and your dependents, plus retirement contributions, subject to country-specific variation.
• 6 months of fully paid parental leave and subsidized fertility support.
• Unlimited vacation with a minimum of 20 days off required each year.
• $10,000 in annual matching for charitable donations.

Requirements

• At least 3 years of management experience leading internal tooling or developer experience teams.
• Availability in GMT -1 to GMT +3, or willingness to align work hours with that time zone range.
• Willingness to travel to Africa once a year for about 6 days, with travel expenses covered by Wave.
• Strong background as a software engineer, ideally in Python-based environments.
• Experience treating internal tools as products, including survey work, adoption measurement, roadmap definition, and trade-off management.
• Clear people-management experience in coaching, performance reviews, mentorship, and career growth planning.
• Project management experience covering prioritization, schedule tracking, deadline management, and cross-functional communication.

Technical skills and knowledge

• Practical experience with modern CI/CD systems such as GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Buildkite, or similar tools.
• Understanding of the trade-offs between pipeline speed, reliability, and cost.
• Experience with developer productivity tools, including local environments, build systems, IDE support, dependency handling, and observability for developers.
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes and container-based deployments in delivery pipelines.
• Familiarity with DORA metrics, the SPACE framework, or DX Core 4, plus an informed view on what should and should not be measured.

DevEx team scope

The DevEx team works on improving the developer environment and internal software delivery systems. Its responsibilities include tooling for local development in Wave’s Python monolith, lifecycle management for shared internal Python modules, CI pipeline reliability and speed, agentic coding tools, and developer-facing observability such as Sentry.

Recent examples of work

• Migrating the build pipeline from CircleCI to GitHub Actions plus Namespace.
• Building a deployments dashboard to show releases in a complex multi-country hybrid setup.
• Creating harnesses, skills, and background agent capabilities to safely use AI tools in software development.

Engineering values

• Preference for dependable, non-flashy technology choices.
• Simple and predictable system design.
• Deep understanding of tools and systems.
• Persistence when solving difficult problems.
• Continuous improvement as both engineers and colleagues.

Current technology stack

• Backend: Python 3 with mypy in a monolith.
• Monitoring and observability: Honeycomb, Datadog, and PGAnalyze.
• Database: Postgres.
• Orchestration: Kubernetes.
• Infrastructure: GCP, data centers, and Terraform.
• Cache: Redis.
• API layer: GraphQL.
• Android frontend: Kotlin and Jetpack.
• iOS frontend: Swift and SwiftUI.
• Web frontend: TypeScript and React.

Team environment

Wave has a fast-growing in-country presence in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Uganda, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon, along with remote colleagues across the world. The company strongly values mission alignment, employee autonomy, and full ownership from problem discovery through to production monitoring. Wave raised Africa’s largest Series A in 2021 and counts Founders Fund, Sequoia Heritage, Stripe, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, and Partech Africa among its investors. It is also among Y Combinator’s top companies by revenue.

How to apply

Applicants are asked to complete the application form and submit an English resume together with a cover letter explaining their interest in Wave and in this position. Wave reviews applications regularly and encourages candidates to apply for the role that best matches their experience and career goals. The company is an equal-opportunity employer and is committed to an inclusive workplace.