Senior Project Manager

Role Description

PawaPay is introducing a single, disciplined way of running cross-functional projects: clear ownership, one source of truth, and reliable visibility. This is the role that makes it work. You will own the delivery system across the business — intake, coordination, visibility, prioritisation support and escalation — while the teams who do the work retain ownership of their own projects.

This is deliberately a standalone senior role reporting to the COO. It is not the head of a Project Management Office and it is not the first hire of a growing PMO. There is no team to build and no governance bureaucracy to stand up. We are looking for a strong operator who runs a system and drives discipline, not an empire-builder.

The core delivery workspace is in the process of being launched in ClickUp and an MVP will be in initial use when you join; your job is to run it, refine it, and make it indispensable — not to build it from a blank page.

What you are accountable for

• Integrity of the delivery system.
• Ensuring no delivery risk reaches leadership without warning.
• Surface risk early and clearly; authority to act on it sits with line managers and the executive.
• Not accountable for the delivery outcome of any individual project.

What you own day to day

• Intake: Ensuring every project enters with a clear, complete brief and a named owner.
• Single source of truth: Keeping a centralised view of every project in ClickUp.
• Prioritisation support: Supporting leadership dialogue on prioritisation and bottleneck management.
• Escalation: Spotting blockers and stalling tasks early.
• Cross functional bridge: Maintaining a clean interface with different departments.
• Active coordination: Actively coordinating the highest-priority projects hands-on.
• Reporting and AI: Stewarding the AI-assisted intake and reporting capability.
• Improvement: Refining the delivery framework and ClickUp workspace.

What you do not own

• Delivery outcomes of individual projects.
• Line management of delivery teams.
• Product and Engineering roadmaps, workflows or daily task management.
• Building a PMO, hiring a team, or introducing governance gates.

How the role is measured

• Early risk surfacing: Surprise rate — missed commitments that reach leadership with no prior formal flag (target: zero).
• Trusted visibility: Shadow trackers retired and ad hoc status requests to teams eliminated.
• Escalation working: Blocker age and share of escalations actioned within the agreed window.
• Prioritisation calls are clear: A known understanding of what we are de-prioritising.
• Intake quality: Projects entering with a complete brief and named owner.

What we are looking for

• Significant experience delivering and coordinating complex, cross-functional projects.
• A track record of bringing order to ambiguity.
• Fluency with ClickUp (or a comparable platform) and Slack.
• Experience delivering merchant integrations, client onboarding or API implementation projects.
• Relevant certification (PMP, PRINCE2, AgilePM, Scrum) is welcome but secondary.

Key competencies

• Exceptional stakeholder management and influence without authority.
• Strong cross-functional coordination.
• Sharp risk anticipation and problem-solving.
• Clear, credible communication with everyone from specialists to the executive team.
• Comfort operating with high autonomy in a fast-paced, ambiguous, high-growth environment.
• A genuine bias toward ownership and toward keeping processes proportionate.

Benefits

• Help improve financial access in Africa.
• Being part of an amazing team that shapes the company’s culture.
• An ambitious, talented, and diverse team who always has your back.
• We grow fast, and you will grow fast with us.
• Competitive remuneration.
• 35 days of paid leave per year (inclusive of public holidays) and more.