How you'll help us achieve it

As a Senior Legal Counsel, you will serve as the primary legal advisor supporting Wave's growth into new markets, including Cameroon & DRC, and facilitate expansion in alignment with business requirements following regulatory approvals in other regions. 

You will partner closely with the business to achieve its objectives through robust contracting, effective legal risk management, and the delivery of clear, practical strategies and solutions.

In this role, you'll be responsible for:

• Contracting: 
  • Drafting and negotiating contracts for all Wave core products and services (agents, payments, procurement) to protect the commercial and legal interests of the business and maximize value.
  • Engaging in complex/high-value contract negotiations.
  • Managing and improving the contracting process, i.e., implementing the contracts policy, contract management software, electronic signature software, physical archiving, and other processes, across countries.  
• Legal operations:
  • Implementing group legal team policies and proposing periodic modifications to the same based upon practical experience, legal developments, and industry best practice, e.g., contracts policy, data privacy policy, etc.
  • Provide cross-functional legal administrative support by ensuring the administrative follow-up of legal documentation for new markets, including the centralisation, traceability, and ongoing updating of legal information.

• Litigation: Implementing procedures to manage claims and disputes, including pre-action case management, mediation, arbitration, and litigation. 
• People support: Legal support for employment contracts, disciplinary matters, and terminations.  
• Company secretarial: Managing company secretarial matters across legal entities. 
• Risk management: Working with the Risk and Controls teams to implement mitigations and related controls in respect of legal risks.  
• Data privacy and consumer protection:
• Developing the data privacy compliance strategy in collaboration with other functions.  
• Building relations with data privacy regulators across the region.  
• Regulatory support: providing legal support on licensing and regulatory matters, and on applications for mobile money licenses in other Francophone countries, in support of lead lawyers responsible for regulatory affairs, and in collaboration with external counsel, if required. 
• Building and managing relationships with our external law firms. 
• Engaging in other aspects of the legal function and other special projects as topics arise.  

Key details

• Location: Can work from Wave's offices in Cameroon or the Democratic Republic of Congo.  
• Travel: Plan to travel 20% of the time to operating markets.
• Reports to the Head of Legal, responsible for Francophone expansion and new markets.
• Our salaries are competitive and calculated using a transparent formula based on your level of experience and location. 
• We pay your health insurance premium for you and your dependents.
• We support working parents - we offer generous parental leave policies (26 weeks for mothers and 4 weeks for fathers) and subsidized child care when you return to work.
• We help you live your most whole life now - we subsidize gym memberships and fitness classes.
• Airtime reimbursement.

Requirements 

• A law degree from an accredited and leading law school and be a qualified lawyer in a Francophone African jurisdiction (OHADA, Cameroon, DRC regulation). 
• 8+ years of experience as an in-house lawyer in technology, finance, fintech, or mobile money in a leading regional or global organization.
• Fluent in French and English.
• Strong communication skills (both written and oral) and the ability to communicate knowledge of the law in a manner that is easily understood and applied.
• Excellent legal drafting.
• Strong planning, organizational, and management skills, and the ability to meet deadlines.

You might be a good fit if you: 

• Are excessively detail-oriented and strive for excellence in everything you undertake.
• I am a self-starter and proactive about achieving ambitious targets.
• Take the initiative and be proactive about achieving ambitious goals.
• Excel at troubleshooting and resolving issues, even under pressure.
• Are willing to go the extra mile to ensure tasks are completed successfully.
• Adjust quickly to shifting priorities and dynamic conditions.
• Foster strong relationships and inspire the best in others.
• Have strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to make complex legal concepts clear and practical.
• Demonstrate exceptional planning, organizational, and management abilities, consistently meeting deadlines.
• Effectively manage legal risks with foresight and precision.
• Approach legal matters with strategic insight and a focus on long-term impact.

How you'll help us achieve it

As a Senior Legal Counsel, you will serve as the primary legal advisor supporting Wave's growth in DRC & new markets, and facilitate expansion in alignment with business requirements following regulatory approvals in other regions. 

You will partner closely with the business to achieve its objectives through robust contracting, effective legal risk management, and the delivery of clear, practical strategies and solutions.

In this role, you'll be responsible for:

• Contracting: 
  • Drafting and negotiating contracts for all Wave core products and services (agents, payments, procurement) to protect the commercial and legal interests of the business and maximize value.
  • Engaging in complex/high-value contract negotiations.
  • Managing and improving the contracting process, i.e., implementing the contracts policy, contract management software, electronic signature software, physical archiving, and other processes, across countries.  
• Legal operations:
  • Implementing group legal team policies and proposing periodic modifications to the same based upon practical experience, legal developments, and industry best practice, e.g., contracts policy, data privacy policy, etc.
  • Provide cross-functional legal administrative support by ensuring the administrative follow-up of legal documentation for new markets, including the centralisation, traceability, and ongoing updating of legal information.

• Litigation: Implementing procedures to manage claims and disputes, including pre-action case management, mediation, arbitration, and litigation. 
• People support: Legal support for employment contracts, disciplinary matters, and terminations.  
• Company secretarial: Managing company secretarial matters across legal entities. 
• Risk management: Working with the Risk and Controls teams to implement mitigations and related controls in respect of legal risks.  
• Data privacy and consumer protection:
• Developing the data privacy compliance strategy in collaboration with other functions.  
• Building relations with data privacy regulators across the region.  
• Regulatory support: providing legal support on licensing and regulatory matters, and on applications for mobile money licenses in other Francophone countries, in support of lead lawyers responsible for regulatory affairs, and in collaboration with external counsel, if required. 
• Building and managing relationships with our external law firms. 
• Engaging in other aspects of the legal function and other special projects as topics arise.  

Key details

• Location: Can work from Wave's offices in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  
• Travel: Plan to travel 20% of the time to operating markets.
• Reports to the Head of Legal, responsible for Francophone expansion and new markets.
• Our salaries are competitive and calculated using a transparent formula based on your level of experience and location. 
• We pay your health insurance premium for you and your dependents.
• We support working parents - we offer generous parental leave policies (26 weeks for mothers and 4 weeks for fathers) and subsidized child care when you return to work.
• We help you live your most whole life now - we subsidize gym memberships and fitness classes.
• Airtime reimbursement.

Requirements 

• A law degree from an accredited and leading law school and be a qualified lawyer in a Francophone African jurisdiction (OHADA, Cameroon, DRC regulation). 
• 8+ years of experience as an in-house lawyer in technology, finance, fintech, or mobile money in a leading regional or global organization.
• Fluent in French and English.
• Strong communication skills (both written and oral) and the ability to communicate knowledge of the law in a manner that is easily understood and applied.
• Excellent legal drafting.
• Strong planning, organizational, and management skills, and the ability to meet deadlines.

You might be a good fit if you: 

• Are excessively detail-oriented and strive for excellence in everything you undertake.
• I am a self-starter and proactive about achieving ambitious targets.
• Take the initiative and be proactive about achieving ambitious goals.
• Excel at troubleshooting and resolving issues, even under pressure.
• Are willing to go the extra mile to ensure tasks are completed successfully.
• Adjust quickly to shifting priorities and dynamic conditions.
• Foster strong relationships and inspire the best in others.
• Have strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to make complex legal concepts clear and practical.
• Demonstrate exceptional planning, organizational, and management abilities, consistently meeting deadlines.
• Effectively manage legal risks with foresight and precision.
• Approach legal matters with strategic insight and a focus on long-term impact.

About Sand

Sand Technologies is a global Physical AI company using data and AI to make critical industries work better. We partner with governments, cities and enterprises to improve how essential systems operate across healthcare, water, energy, telecommunications and infrastructure.

Our work delivers proven real-world impact. We have built AI systems that help manage London’s water supply, supported telecom network planning across hundreds of cities, and developed digital healthcare platforms serving tens of millions of people across Africa. From intelligent command centers to AI-powered infrastructure platforms, we help organizations sense, analyze and act in complex environments.

Our people are ambitious, curious and relentlessly practical. Our teams work alongside clients in the field, solving hard problems and deploying solutions that last. With colleagues across Africa, Europe, the UK and the US, we operate across the full stack - from research and engineering to deployment and capability building.

Our mission is simple: to harness AI to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges.

About the role

Sand is scaling rapidly across Africa, partnering with Ministries of Health to deploy the Health Operating System (HOS) — a decision-support and execution platform that transforms how health systems sense, analyze, and act on data. The HOS is already operational across multiple countries, with plans to expand to 15 countries by end of 2026, supported by 80+ Forward Deployed Engineers.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you are the technical spearhead of our client engagement in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Unlike our roaming FDE roles, this is a permanently embedded position. You will be based full-time within the Ministry of Health in the DRC, becoming a long-term extension of the client's operational team. Your mandate is to build deep institutional relationships, develop comprehensive understanding of the national health system, and deliver sustained value over an extended engagement — not just rapid sprints, but lasting transformation.

This is not staff augmentation. You are an amalgamation of three roles:

1. The Software Engineer — Deep technical acumen to build and deploy production-grade solutions using Sand's product suite
2. The Product Manager — Strategic foresight to understand client problems, influence business objectives, and identify expansion opportunities
3. The Consultant — Client-facing finesse to navigate complex stakeholder relationships, manage scope, and transfer knowledge

Your primary mission is to prove our value fast, delivering functional solutions rapidly using Sand's products, playbooks, and tools, and then maturing those solutions into mission-critical infrastructure that the Ministry depends on daily. Over time, you become the institutional memory of the deployment — the person who understands the data landscape, the stakeholder dynamics, and the operational realities better than anyone.

Who We're Looking For

The Forward Deployed Engineer is a highly ambitious individual. You are someone who is deeply keen on learning — someone who dives in headfirst to solve some of the hardest, most complex problems in global health. You thrive on understanding the technology, understanding the stakeholders, understanding our product suite, and weaving all three together to deliver solutions that change how health systems operate.

This role is not for someone looking for comfort or routine. It is for someone who wants to step outside of their comfort zone, build something they can be proud of, and grow faster than they thought possible. The FDE programme is a career accelerator — an intensive rotation that exposes you to technical depth, strategic thinking, and client leadership in equal measure, all while working on problems that matter for millions of people.

For this permanently embedded role, you also need the maturity and resilience to sustain deep client relationships over months and years — not just weeks. You will become the face of Sand in Malawi, and that requires patience, cultural fluency, and the ability to navigate institutional complexity while maintaining momentum.

Key Responsibilities

Serve as Sand's Permanent Technical Presence in the Democratic Republic of Congo

• Embed full-time within the Ministry of Health, becoming a trusted member of the client's extended team
• Develop deep, longitudinal understanding of the national health data landscape, institutional dynamics, and operational priorities
• Build and maintain relationships across all levels of the Ministry — from frontline data officers to senior leadership
• Act as the primary technical point of contact for all Sand activities in-country, coordinating with launchers, country directors, and visiting FDE teams

Drive On-Site Value Delivery

• Rapidly unlock, explore, and integrate client data sources (e.g., DHIS2, SCADA systems, network management platforms, operational databases)
• Understand client problems through prototyping and rapid value delivery — deploying POCs and MVPs using Sand's product components and playbooks
• Transition initial solutions into hardened, production-grade systems that the Ministry relies on daily
• Own the long-term health of deployed solutions — monitoring adoption, troubleshooting issues, and iterating based on user feedback
• Deliver and track value generated through deployment of Sand products

Enable Product-Led Growth

• Lead with Sand's existing product suite — know the products by heart and where each solution is most effective for the domain you're deployed in
• Document learnings, client challenges, and successful solutions as reusable patterns for the broader FDE community
• Drive discovery and expansion by uncovering new opportunities on the ground

Build Local Capacity and Sustainability

• Work alongside Ministry teams to co-create solutions and progressively transfer knowledge, ensuring they can operate and maintain systems independently
• Identify, recruit, and mentor local data engineers, scientists, and analysts to build sustainable in-country capacity
• Develop training materials and documentation tailored to the local context, language, and skill level
• Be the continuity that ensures handover isn't a cliff — you bridge the gap between Sand's deployment and the Ministry's long-term ownership

Feed the Platform Feedback Loop

• Channel field learnings back to improve the core product through structured mechanisms (Technical Deep Dives, Solution Swarms, pattern documentation)
• Turn "gravel roads" into "paved superhighways" — document solution patterns so the next FDE can move faster
• Contribute field feedback that influences 30% of the product roadmap

Requirements — Essential

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical field
• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, data science, system deployment, or technical leadership
• Proficiency in at least one of: Python, SQL/PostgreSQL, JavaScript — with ability to write production-grade code
• Strong problem-solving skills with a bias toward action and rapid prototyping
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills — comfortable presenting to senior government or corporate stakeholders and translating between technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience working with or deploying to government, public sector, or large institutional clients
• Proven ability to lead local technical teams and build capacity
• Willingness to relocate and be permanently based in the DRC for the duration of the engagement (12-24+ months)
• Language: Local language proficiency is a significant advantage

Requirements — Preferred

• Experience with data integration, ETL pipelines, and working with diverse data sources
• Experience in one or more of Sand's focus domains: health informatics/digital health, water utility operations, telecommunications network operations, or energy systems
• Familiarity with domain-specific platforms (e.g., DHIS2, OpenMRS for health; SCADA, GIS for water/energy; OSS/BSS for telecom)
• Experience with BI and dashboarding tools, particularly Apache Superset
• Experience with data transformation tools such as dbt or Airflow
• Comfort working with data dictionaries, reporting requirements, and identifying common data quality issues
• Knowledge of data security, privacy, and interoperability standards (e.g., FHIR for healthcare, GDPR, local data sovereignty requirements)
• Experience operating in resource-constrained environments (unreliable power, limited connectivity)

Work Environment

This is a permanently embedded role. You will work on-site at the Ministry of Health in the DRC 4 days per week, with 1 day for focused remote work, internal collaboration, and knowledge sharing with the broader FDE community. You should expect to be based in the DRC for a minimum of 12-24 months.

You must be self-driven, comfortable operating as Sand's primary technical representative in-country, and disciplined with online collaboration tools to stay connected with the broader Sand team across geographies. Cultural sensitivity, adaptability, and genuine interest in the local context are essential — you are not passing through, you are putting down roots.