Payroll Systems Analyst

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 9 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 seeking a Payroll Systems Analyst to help us streamline our payroll operations and build the tools that connect payroll to the rest of the business. We're looking for someone who is excited about solving complex process, data and technical challenges in a high-growth fintech environment, and who knows that every payroll error lands on a real person's payslip.

The Payroll Systems Analyst will report to the HR Systems Lead within the HR Technology team. You'll join just after we go live on our new HRIS. In this role, you'll act as a bridge between our Payroll, People and Finance teams and our technical capabilities, designing processes and building tools that handle multi-country payroll, different statutory and tax regimes, multiple currencies, and varying local requirements.

In this role, you’ll:

• Defining and strengthening our Payroll team's ways of working

  • Mapping how payroll runs today in each of our markets: inputs, calendars, cut-offs, approvals, handoffs with HR and Finance, and the in-country providers involved. You'll identify where effort is manual, duplicated or at risk.
  • Aligning global payroll standards, system controls and RACIs across countries, while keeping room for the local statutory requirements that can't be standardized.
  • Defining how payroll requests, changes and issues are received, tracked and resolved, for example through our internal service desk, so that nothing depends on email threads or individual memory.
  • Training Payroll team members on new processes and tools, and acting as their primary partner for systems questions.

  Building our in-house payroll-to-finance reconciliation tool

  • Owning the design and delivery of an internal tool that reconciles payroll outputs from our providers against the HRIS and the general ledger across entities and countries, from requirements through build, testing and rollout.
  • Defining the reconciliation logic with Payroll and Finance: headcount, gross-to-net, employer costs, accruals, cost center and entity mapping, FX, and variance thresholds.
  • Automating data ingestion from payroll provider reports and HRIS extracts, and building clear exception reporting so the teams spend their time on discrepancies rather than on matching rows.
  • Iterating on the tool after launch based on user feedback and month-end close needs, and documenting it so it can be maintained and extended.

  Providing core Payroll Systems support

  • Supporting the stabilization of HRIS-to-payroll data flows after our new HRIS go-live, so that hires, job and compensation changes, leave and terminations reach payroll accurately and on time.
  • Analyzing payroll workflows and integrations to recommend improvements, with a focus on reducing manual inputs and spreadsheet handoffs between HR, Payroll and Finance.
  • Supporting future payroll provider changes, consolidations, integrations and new-market launches.
  • Coordinating the testing of legislative and system updates so that statutory changes (tax tables, social contributions, minimum wage) are applied correctly.

  Driving Payroll Data Quality and Reporting

  • Owning payroll data quality across systems and conducting regular audits to find and resolve discrepancies.
  • Developing payroll reporting and dashboards that support HR, Finance and business decisions, such as payroll cost by entity and country, and period-over-period variance.
  • Managing data privacy and access controls for sensitive pay and banking data in line with GDPR and other applicable regulations.

Key details

• Employees in remote positions at Wave can work remotely from anywhere (between UTC -8 and +4) with reliable internet access in the US, Canada, United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland, Spain, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Uganda, Kenya, or Ghana.
• Our salaries are competitive and are calculated using a transparent formula. For this role, we are offering an annual gross salary range of $88,100 -$125,900 depending on your level and location.
• 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.
• Flexible vacation, with most folks taking between 30-40 days per year.
• $10,000 annual charitable donation matching.

Requirements

• Fluent in English and French.
• Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, Information Systems, Business Administration, or a related field.
• 3+ years of experience in HRIS, payroll operations, payroll systems or payroll accounting, ideally in a multi-country or multi-entity organization.
• Experience and understanding of end-to-end payroll processes, including inputs, calendars and cut-offs, gross-to-net, statutory deductions, and payments.
• Hands-on experience reconciling payroll to the general ledger, including employer costs, accruals, and cost center and entity mapping.
• Experience working with third-party or in-country payroll providers, and with the data flows between the HRIS, payroll and finance systems.
• Demonstrated experience documenting, standardizing and improving processes, such as controls, checklists, sign-off flows and RACIs.
• Advanced knowledge of data management, analysis and reporting
• Experience building tools or automations (scripts, Apps Script, low-code platforms like Workato or Zapier), or a strong interest in learning to.
• Experience with Business Intelligence systems like Sigma, Power BI or Looker.
• Effective written and verbal communication to collaborate with Payroll, HR and Finance stakeholders and explain technical information to non-technical audiences.
• Advanced Excel/Google Sheets skills.

Nice to have:

• Payroll experience in francophone West Africa (e.g. CNPS, IPRES/CSS, ITS/IRPP) or with OHADA accounting.
• Experience with Workday or another enterprise HRIS.
• A payroll certification (CPP, FPC, CIPP)

Our team

• We have a rapidly growing in-country team in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Uganda, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon plus remote team members spread across the world.
• We're deeply passionate about our mission of bringing radically affordable financial services to the people who need them most.
• We foster autonomy for our employees. You'll own your projects at every stage, from understanding the problem to monitoring your solution in production.
• We raised the largest Series A in Africa in 2021. Our world-class investors, include Founders Fund, Sequoia Heritage, Stripe, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, and Partech Africa.
• We are on Y Combinator's top companies by revenue.

How to apply

Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English and a cover letter describing your interest in Wave and the role.

We review applications frequently and recommend that you apply to the role that most closely aligns with your skills, experience and career goals.

Wave is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.