Strategy & Operations Manager

AI overview

Drive growth by leading high-impact projects and optimizing operations to support NALA's hyper-growth in the payments industry.

👋 About Us

NALA is building Payments for the Next Billion. Faster, smarter, and fairer transfers for everyone. Since 2022, we've grown our business 120x, grown the team from 9 to 150+, raised $50M+ from top-tier investors, and were named to the Forbes Fintech 50 in 2025.

We operate two core products:

  • NALA, our consumer app making cross-border payments cheaper, faster and more reliable for the global diaspora. Allowing users to send money from the UK, US and EU to Africa and Asia.
  • Rafiki, our B2B payments infrastructure, is powering global payments.

Our team includes alumni from Wise, Stripe, Monzo, Revolut, and CashApp — operators who’ve scaled world-class products. We act with urgency, think deeply, and put our customers first always.

At NALA, this isn’t just a job. It’s ownership, impact, and the chance to change global payments forever.

Join us in building Payments for the Next Billion

🙌 Your Mission

Drive growth by leading high-impact projects, optimising operations, and forging strategic partnerships — all powered by data and execution.

🎯 Your Responsibilities in this Role

  • Building and optimising scalable processes to continue Nala's hyper-growth
  • Leading and executing (end to end) core infrastructure projects
  • Exploring and defining which projects the team should prioritise, and setting a timeline to reach goals quickly
  • Managing critical vendor relationships and building performance tracking systems
  • Developing strategic supply chain partnerships and negotiating commercial terms

🔥 Must-have requirements

  • 2+ years of work experience in a fast-paced environment (Preferably McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Top Tier IB or other strategy consulting firms)
  • Experience coding with SQL, Python, or R
  • A solid track record of taking ownership and leading complex projects end to end
  • A magic skill to break complex problems into smaller ones and enjoy working with data
  • Willing to re-locate to Nairobi, Kenya
  • Natural curiosity and will to make an impact
  • An interest in the financial industry

💪 Nice to have requirements

  • Additional language skills

✅ Success in the role looks like

3-Month Metrics

  • Project Ownership: Leading at least one cross functional infrastructure project with clear progress as we scale our operations.

6-Month Metrics

  • Project Delivery: Managing a portfolio of projects across our operations, finding efficiencies across different teams to create a more scalable operation.

➡️ Interview Process

You will need to first submit your application through our ATS Workable. There is no need to submit a Cover Letter.

If successful you will be selected for our interview process which has 4 stages:

  1. [30mins] Interview with the Talent Team
    • In this stage we want to get to know you a bit more and follow up on your experience and motivations. The best preparation would be to really know why you applied for the role (i.e. your application questions)
  2. [1hour] Interview with the Operations Manager
    • In this stage, we want to get to know you and your experience deeply and we will focus closely on your experience as detailed on your CV. The best preparation is to just know whats on your CV really well 👍
  3. Assessment and assessment review interview
    • We will want to test your operational nouse via a short exercise involve a fictitious task that could happen in the role.
    • The Operations will go through your submission with you, allowing time for you to present and field questions related to the task
  4. [45mins] Leadership Interview(s)
    • The final interview will involve speaking with a member of our leadership team about your motivation for the role and will be a great opportunity to ask any questions you have about the business.

⭐️ Benefits

  • 23 Days Off Plus Kenyan Bank Holidays: Take the time to decompress. Working at a startup is hard!
  • Private Medical: Coverage for you and your dependents (optionally) from day one!
  • Birthday Leave: Celebrate your special day with a bonus day off to take off in that month
  • Learning Budget: Fuel your growth with $1000 annually for learning and development.
  • Free Lunch: Every day - that’s it!
  • Monthly Birthday Party: Join fun social events every month to celebrate achievements, milestones and birthdays across the month

Perks & Benefits Extracted with AI

  • Free Meals & Snacks: Free Lunch: Every day - that’s it!
  • Health Insurance: Private Medical: Coverage for you and your dependents (optionally) from day one!
  • Learning Budget: Learning Budget: Fuel your growth with $1000 annually for learning and development.
  • Monthly birthday party: Monthly Birthday Party: Join fun social events every month to celebrate achievements, milestones and birthdays across the month
  • Paid Time Off: Birthday Leave: Celebrate your special day with a bonus day off to take off in that month

We’re on a mission to increase economic opportunities for Africans across the globe, and we’re keen to hear from capable, ambitious, and creative people who want to help bring this vision to fruition. 🚀 Our first product was a mobile money service in East Africa, which gained over 2,000 customers. Now we’ve set our sights on building a bank for the African diaspora across the globe and our initial focus is on remittances. We’re currently launching an international money transfer service for African living overseas, who send money home to their loved ones. We’re backed by: Balderton Capital, Y- Combinator, Accel Partners, and several incredible fintech angel investors including the founders of Monzo, Comply Advantage, Luno, and Simple.Find us on TechCrunch What we are currently building 🚀 We want to build a bank for the African diaspora globally, initially by starting with a cross-border money transfer service. We believe this is critical to solve to channel economic value back to the African continent. We believe using remittances is one of the best forms of true economic development and we would like to use it as an entry point before building new layers of financial services for the African diaspora. At a starting point we are excited about: Building Remittances 2.0 - we know remittance fees are a race to the bottom and believe the current model has some things that need to be changed. Enabling credit - for senders sending money back to Africa so they don’t have to wait till they get their paycheck at the end of the month. Building infrastructure - enabling payments infrastructure locally in Africa. Building a community of African diaspora helping us build an incredible product together.

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