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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:
- Strategy or operations consulting
- Early-stage startup operations, strategy, or founder’s office roles
- 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.
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