How you'll help us achieve it

Wave is now the largest financial institution in Senegal, with over 9 million users. And, we’re still in the early days of our product roadmap and potential impact on people’s everyday lives.

We are looking for someone resourceful, organised, and proactive about getting things done to join our business development team in Burkina Faso.

Reporting to the Head of Business Development, you are the bridge between external companies and the internal Wave teams. The business development team cultivates the relationships, establishes partnerships and executes contracts based on the needs of the product and operation teams as we rapidly scale our business in Burkina Faso. 

In this role, you'll: 

Partnerships and Relationships: 

• Build and strengthen partnerships between Wave and key entities like the Central Bank, banks, microfinances, telecom companies, international remittances and businesses that Wave needs to scale. This will involve extensive research and leveraging your networks to determine the best partner for Wave, then owning the acquisition. You will also manage the relationships with all external stakeholders and ensure that Wave’s service level agreements are met. As Wave grows in the market, the types of partnerships and services required will change. 
• Do whatever it takes to help Wave scale in Sierra Leone! This will involve helping with a wide array of tasks across multiple disciplines.
• Strategic Reporting: 
• Produce key business performance reports periodically for Wave partners. This can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, annually or as needed.
• Develop and update presentations for partner meetings as well as internal playbooks.
• Communication and Culture: 
• Facilitate communication between external partners and internal Wave teams (Product, Finance, Distribution, Compliance, Legal) and work collaboratively internally to ensure that leads have the information needed to make decisions.
• Propagate Wave culture and ensure that Wave is a fun and rewarding place to work
• Compliance and Regulatory: 
• Ensure that Wave Sierra Leone complies with all the relevant regulations and specifications externally and internally alongside the Compliance team. Externally, this will mean making sure that we comply with the government of Sierra Leone’s business regulations and working closely with Wave’s bank partners to address compliance topics. Internally, this will require you to a) know what Wave requires from all its operations and b) constantly hold different departments and business unit heads accountable to make sure they are complying with the Wave standards.

Key details

• Location: Sierra Leone, or other regions. Willingness to relocate to other regions for 2-3 month periods is required.
• Work authorisation in the Sierra Leone is required. 
• Our salaries are competitive and calculated using a transparent formula.
• We offer generous health insurance for yourself and your dependents.
• We support working parents - we offer 26 weeks of parental leave for mothers and 4 weeks for fathers, in addition to subsidised child care when they return to work.
• Airtime reimbursement.
• Free food and a beautiful office space.

Requirements

• University degree in Communications, Telecommunications, Finance, International Relations, Business Management, or a related field.
• At least 5 years experience in a similar position at banks, telcos, international remittance companies or Fintechs.
• Fluent in French and English.

You might be a good fit if you

• Have a strong network of friends and former colleagues from your work in B2B sales or work at a telecom operator that you are excited for an excuse to call, meet and work with
• Have identified and professionally engaged with strategic partners by seizing upon mutually beneficial opportunities, and being relentless in your pursuit.
• Have exceptional strategic thinking skills, proactive execution abilities, and a creative approach to generating leads.
• Are at ease in a boardroom giving presentations or preparing partner onboarding documents in French or English.
• Are enthusiastic about Wave's mission and excited to do what needs to be done to achieve it.
• Like teamwork, but you also know how to work well autonomously.
• Have demonstrated tenacity and a willingness to go the distance to get something done.
• Are very detail-oriented and seek to achieve excellence in everything you do.
• Have experience working at an international company.
• Are intellectually curious, creative in the way you go about tackling problems, and embrace failure as a means to spark innovation and growth
  
  

About Imagine Worldwide

All children have immense potential, but hundreds of millions don’t have access to the learning they need. Imagine Worldwide believes that every child should be empowered with the basic right to literacy and numeracy. We provide an innovative education technology solution and implementation model to the global literacy/numeracy learning crisis using the onebillion application and various toolkits and systems to support implementation. Our model is massively scalable, evidence-based, and can deliver foundational learning to millions of the most marginalized children.

Imagine Worldwide partners with governments, organizations, and communities to provide child-directed, tablet-based learning that is accessible, effective, and affordable. We are incorporated in California (United States) as a nonprofit organization, but operate in Sub-Saharan Africa through locally-registered entities in Malawi, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. Learn more on our website.

About the Role

The Senior Director of Delivery is the second most senior leadership role in the organization, reporting directly to the Executive Director and serving as a key driver of Imagine Worldwide Sierra Leone’s strategy and impact. This position plays a central role in advancing Imagine’s mission to design, deliver, and scale high-quality tablet-based learning solutions that enable children across Sierra Leone to achieve foundational literacy and numeracy at national scale.

This role carries significant organizational value and influence. The Senior Director of Delivery is responsible for translating strategy into execution by ensuring that programs, technology, logistics, data systems, and partner engagement are aligned and operating effectively. The position provides executive-level oversight to ensure that implementation plans move beyond design into measurable, real-world impact in schools and communities.

Working across both global and in-country teams, the Senior Director of Delivery drives alignment, accountability, prioritization, and cross-functional problem-solving. The role ensures that learning programs launch successfully, operate reliably, and continuously improve through strong systems, data-driven decision-making, and collaborative leadership. As a senior organizational leader, the Senior Director of Delivery also contributes to shaping institutional culture, strengthening operational excellence, and guiding teams through periods of growth and scale.

The successful candidate will join a highly committed and collaborative leadership team dedicated to empowering every child, everywhere to reach their full potential. This position requires a strategic thinker with strong execution skills, the ability to lead across diverse teams and stakeholders, and a passion for delivering large-scale education transformation in Sierra Leone.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Delivery Leadership

• Provide leadership and accountability for coordinated delivery across Programs, MEAL, Logistics, and Technical Services, ensuring work is coordinated to achieve program outcomes and operational reliability
• Serve as the country's primary integrator for delivery execution, ensuring leadership receives one coherent view of delivery progress, constraints, and decision needs.
• Shape and translate the country scale plan into clear delivery outcomes (e.g., launch readiness, device uptime, training completion, data completeness, time-on-task enablement) and hold delivery leaders accountable.
• Ensure coordination with global functions as needed and alignment with Imagine’s key performance areas and indicators.
• Contribute to discussions, policy notes, etc., as needed, on national scale and government transition.
• Represent Imagine Worldwide Sierra Leone across any external delivery platforms and/or as designated by the Executive Director.

Delivery Planning 

• Develop and own a single integrated delivery plan that synchronizes all delivery workstreams (launch preparation and recurring operations), with clear milestones, dependencies, resourcing assumptions, and accountable owners.
• Establish and lead a delivery operating rhythm (planning, execution reviews, performance reviews, and retrospectives) that drives disciplined execution, early risk detection, and timely decision-making.
• Balance competing priorities across delivery functions and make unified prioritization calls grounded in mission outcomes, data, capacity constraints, and delivery risk.
• Define and monitor delivery KPIs; track performance trends via a delivery performance dashboard; and drive corrective actions through structured data reviews and cross-functional problem-solving.
• Own delivery risk management and escalation by maintaining a delivery risks and issues register, proactively identifying material risks, defining mitigation plans with clear owners and timelines, and ensuring risks are escalated early through agreed pathways.
• Lead incident response for material delivery disruptions (e.g., rollout delays, uptime failures, safety/security incidents impacting learning, partner underperformance) by coordinating rapid triage, containment, root-cause analysis, and prevention of recurrence.
• Ensure transparent progress and governance reporting, including decision logs, escalation pathways, and measurement systems that support delivery improvement through data quality assurance and actionable insights.

Operational Excellence

• Build and maintain standardized training systems, SOPs, and capacity-building programs that ensure consistent, high-quality delivery at scale. Oversee delivery-critical partner performance (e.g., ISPs and service providers), ensuring clear expectations, coordinated work, and timely issue resolution.
• Codify best practices and policies that reduce institutional knowledge gaps and increase delivery resilience.
• Partner with the ED as a senior leader, providing integrated delivery oversight and escalating only the highest-priority issues requiring ED intervention. Contribute to the country leadership team by role-modeling Imagine values, driving organizational health, and leading through ambiguity and change.

People Management

• Line manage the delivery function leads (Directors of Program, Director Technical Services, Logistics Manager, and MEAL Manager). 
• Lead and manage staff reporting to them, setting clear expectations, priorities, and performance standards.
• Develop leadership capacity through coaching, feedback, performance management, and succession planning to support scale and sustainability.

Requirements

The successful candidate will possess the following competencies, experiences, and qualities:

Education and Work Experience

Bachelor's degree or higher with a minimum of 10 years of progressive experience in operations leadership, program delivery, or a similar senior role, including at least 5 years managing teams. Management consulting experience is a plus. 

Role-Specific Skills Required

• Significant experience in managing successful program scaling.  
• Proven track record in managing scale operations in complex environments working with multiple partners 
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English
• Strong ability to analyze and interpret data to inform decisions, coupled with proven project management skills to plan, execute, and deliver projects effectively.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills and ability to proactively manage and resolve conflicts
• Excellent understanding of budgets, financial processesR, reporting requirements, and compliance regulations within donor-funded grants and contracts
• Ability to work effectively in multicultural environments and teams 
• Strong organizational skills, superior attention to detail, ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
• Compensation & Benefits

Location

This position is open to candidates based anywhere on the African continent who are willing to relocate. Employment will be on in-country terms (salary scale and benefits aligned with the host country). Imagine Worldwide will support work permit sponsorship and provide relocation assistance where required.

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis

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Imagine Worldwide is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.