Founder's Associate

Role overview

We are hiring a Founder’s Associate in Dubai to work directly with the Founder of a fast-scaling,

venture-backed payments company operating across the UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. This

role is designed for an exceptional early-career generalist, already based in the UAE, who wants

real ownership, founder-level exposure, and accelerated responsibility.

You will operate as an extension of the Founder’s thinking and execution, working across

strategy, finance, investor relations, partnerships, hiring and critical cross-functional initiatives,

across three operating entities. The role combines rigorous problem-solving with hands-on

execution in a demanding, intellectually serious environment.

This is not an executive assistant role. It is a core operating role with a steep learning curve and a

clear path to leadership for top performers.

Responsibilities

Founder’s office and operating rhythm

• Work directly with the Founder to structure complex, ambiguous problems into clear decisions
• Prepare concise one-pagers and decision memos that let the Founder decide in one pass
• Own the company priority tracker: send the Founder a daily update, chase owners, unblock and escalate
• Facilitate weekly leadership meetings across the UAE and Bahrain teams
• Represent the Founder in internal and selected external discussions with professionalism and sound judgment

Finance and controls

• Run monthly reconciliations across entities: transaction reports against payment gateway settlement files, bank statements and ledgers
• Coordinate financial reviews and audits with external accountants
• Draft and maintain company policies
• Investor relations and fundraising
• Produce investor returns and regular investor updates covering GMV, take rate, merchant funnel, cash and runway
• Support fundraising and investor processes, including decks, cap table, data room preparation and programme applications

Commercial, partnerships and product

• Draft merchant agreements and rate schedules; own onboarding fee and pricing policy
• Manage partner relationships
• Negotiate vendor and outsourced engineering contracts
• Write product requirement documents for merchant-facing and internal tools with the tech team
• Conduct targeted market, competitive, and strategic research

People

• Run hiring end to end across finance, sales, operations and tech: sourcing, agency management, screening, interviews and scorecards
• Support HR processes, including onboarding, offboarding and final settlements

Required experience

• 2–5 years of experience in a high-performance environment, such as:

o Strategy or operations consulting

o Early-stage startup operations, strategy, or founder’s office roles

o Other demanding generalist roles with real ownership

• Experience in the UAE or wider GCC business environment preferred

• Proven ability to operate in ambiguity and take responsibility for outcomes

• Experience working closely with founders, partners, or senior stakeholders

• Strong financial literacy: reconciliations, financial statements and payments economics (GMV,

take rate, MDR)

• Comfort owning work that touches compliance and money movement, where accuracy is

non-negotiable

Academic background

• Strong academic record from a leading university, in the UAE or internationally

• Evidence of intellectual rigor, strong writing, and structured thinking

Skills and capabilities

• Exceptional problem structuring and first-principles reasoning

• Outstanding written communication, capable of producing decision-driving one-pagers

• Strong analytical ability and numerical intuition; every figure defined and tied back to source

• High execution velocity with attention to detail

• Commercial judgment in negotiations with partners, vendors and merchants

• Clear, confident communicator with sound judgment and low ego

• Strong ownership mindset and professional maturity

• Fluent English; Arabic is a plus

Tools

Must-have:

• Excel or Google Sheets, to an advanced level (lookups, pivots, reconciliation workbooks)

• Google Docs and Slides or PowerPoint

• Notion or equivalent documentation tools

• Slack and asynchronous communication tools

Nice-to-have:

• CRM tools such as HubSpot or Salesforce

• Project management tools such as Jira, Linear, ClickUp, or Asana

• BI and analytics tools such as Power BI, Looker, Metabase, or Tableau

• Investor and data room tools such as DocSend

Location and working model

• Dubai-based role

• Open to current UAE residents only: candidates must already live in the UAE and hold a

valid UAE residence visa at the time of applying

• UAE employment visa provided by Local on hire

• Hybrid working: 3 days per week in the office

Compensation and benefits

• Competitive salary

• Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP)

• Comprehensive health insurance

• Unlimited annual leave, with a high-trust culture around time off

• Hybrid working model

• High ownership, high exposure, and accelerated career trajectory

Why this role

This is a rare opportunity to work at close range with a founder, develop exceptional judgment and

operating skills, and play a meaningful role in building a category-defining company from Dubai, in

one of the world’s fastest-growing regions.