Operations & Strategy Manager

Role Overview

Operations & Strategy Manager at Ziina, based in the UAE.

Company Overview

Ziina is building MENA's consumer and SMB financial platform, starting with a peer-to-peer and merchant wallet. The mission is to bring financial freedom to every person in the Middle East. The team includes talent from Apple, Uber, Stripe, Klarna, Revolut, Yandex, and Nubank. Payments volumes have grown 10x year-over-year for the last two years. The product has achieved a 4.8 star rating in the app store and has received 8 international design awards, including the Red Dot Award and the UX Design Award. The company raised a $22 million Series A from investors including Altos Ventures, Fintech Collective, Activant, Long Journey Ventures, and Y Combinator. Angel investors include early employees and executives from Revolut, Stripe, Venmo, Brex, Checkout.com, Notion, and Deel.

Role Purpose

This role sits at the heart of Ziina's most ambitious infrastructure bets, working directly with leadership and engineering to drive complex, high-impact projects during a major inflection point in payments infrastructure. You will build the future rather than manage business as usual, thriving on ambiguity, moving fast, and turning multi-stakeholder initiatives into crisp, executable plans.

Key Responsibilities

Payments Infrastructure & Project Delivery

• Own and drive complex payments infrastructure projects end-to-end, from scoping through to regulatory approval, commercial negotiation, and live launch.
• Build and maintain rigorous project frameworks including timelines, milestones, risk registers, and decision logs, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks across large cross-functional teams.

Regulatory & Compliance

• Navigate licensing and regulatory processes, coordinating with relevant authorities, scheme representatives, and external counsel.

Engineering & Technical Alignment

• Work hand-in-hand with engineering to bridge the gap between business requirements and technical execution, translating complex operations constraints into actionable specifications.
• Remain comfortable working directly with engineering and technical teams, holding your own in technical conversations while aligning on requirements and keeping delivery on track.

Vendor Management & Commercial Strategy

• Lead vendor evaluation and commercial negotiations, building business cases and financial models needed to support major infrastructure decisions.
• Manage senior external relationships with payment schemes, regulators, technology partners, and financial institutions with professionalism and precision.

Analytics & Insights

• Turn data into decisions using SQL, Excel, and other analytical tools to size opportunities, track progress, and surface risks before they become problems.

Roadmap & Support

• Support the broader payments and operations roadmap, picking up high-priority projects beyond your primary mandate as Ziina continues to scale.

Qualifications & Experience

• 2–4 years of experience in a fast-paced fintech, payments company, startup, or financial institution.
• Strong track record of owning and delivering complex, cross-functional projects, having driven something difficult from start to finish.
• Experience navigating regulatory and licensing processes in payments, financial services, or another regulated domain.
• Fluency in SQL, comfort building dashboards, and ability to conduct independent analysis without waiting for others to pull numbers.
• Prior experience working at or with a payment acquirer, payment facilitator, or card scheme such as Visa or Mastercard.
• Familiarity with acquiring economics, including interchange, scheme fees, BIN sponsorship, or settlement flows.
• Experience working with UAE or GCC regulators including CBUAE, ADGM, or DFSA, or with regional financial institutions.

Skills & Competencies

• Thrive on creating order and structure out of ambiguity.
• Take initiative and possess a strong bias towards action.
• High integrity and team-first mentality.
• Question assumptions others take for granted and use first principles thinking.
• Analytically sharp with strong data literacy.

Additional Information

• Location: Must live in, or be willing to move to, the UAE.
• Competitive salary and equity in the company. In Dubai, 0% income tax applies, so you keep all earnings.
• Relocation support includes generous assistance with visas, housing, and settling in Dubai for you and your family.
• Hybrid work environment with work-from-home on Wednesdays and Fridays, plus up to 2 months per year remote work allowance (1 month in the summer and 1 month split during the year).
• Quality health insurance covering medical, dental, and vision care for you and your family.
• Paid parental leave to bond with your growing family.
• Mentorship from top global tech leaders and financial support for courses, books, or training programs.
• Ziina Evening Meal Program: dinner provided through Deliveroo partnership when working late.