Senior Project Manager

The role

We are 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;

You are accountable for the integrity of the delivery system and for ensuring that no delivery risk reaches leadership without warning.

In practice, the principle is simple: no surprises, not no slips. Projects will slip — often for external reasons we do not control. If a project slips and leadership saw it coming and made a conscious call, you have done your job. If a project slips and it blindsides us, that is a failure of the role, whatever the underlying cause. You surface risk early and clearly; the authority to act on it sits with line managers and the executive.

You are not accountable for the delivery outcome of any individual project. Accountability for delivery is held at task level by the person who owns each task, and overall project ownership stays with the intake owner (Sales Executive, Account Manager or Functional Lead). You are the framework and the safety net, not a substitute driver.

What you own day to day

• Intake. The integrity of the intake process — ensuring every project enters with a clear, complete brief and a named owner before work begins, and that the AI-assisted intake tooling is used and kept useful.
• Single source of truth. Keeping a single, trusted, centralised view of every project in ClickUp, so that business owners and leadership never need to request an ad hoc status update and no team needs its own shadow tracker.
• Prioritisation support. Supporting leadership dialogue on prioritisation and bottleneck management — preparing the portfolio view, helping facilitate the session, and ensuring it produces a force-ranked list with an explicit de-prioritised column that is logged and communicated. 
• Escalation. Spotting blockers and stalling tasks early, flagging them to the responsible line manager within the agreed window, and escalating to the COO where they are not resolved.
• Cross functional bridge. Maintaining a clean interface with different departments within the organisation, ensuring fast alignment, clarity on project deliverables and timelines, and efficient delivery across the organisation at large. Build fantastic relationships with all collaborators in the organisation, encouraging their collaboration and buy in on project management activities. 
• Active coordination. Actively coordinating the highest-priority projects hands-on, while ensuring the rest run correctly through the framework via their owners.
• Reporting and AI. Stewarding the AI-assisted intake and reporting capability, and turning the maintained ClickUp data into the business reports and dashboards as necessitated by business owners. Adopting an AI first mindset as we optimise and improve the way in which we run cross functional projects. 
• Improvement. Refining the delivery framework and ClickUp workspace as real use exposes what needs to change — continuous, pragmatic improvement, never process for its own sake.

What you do not own

To keep the role sharp, it is as important to be clear on what sits outside it:

• Delivery outcomes of individual projects — these sit with task owners and intake owners.
• Line management of delivery teams — tool discipline and performance are enforced by each person’s own line manager, not by you.
• Product and Engineering roadmaps, workflows or daily task management.
• Building a PMO, hiring a team, or introducing governance gates. Possible growth on our project management team is a future decision for the COO, contingent on evidence — not an expectation of this role.

How the role is measured

You will be measured on the health of the delivery system and on early warning, not on outcomes you do not control. The primary measures are:

• 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. We have a clear view on priority decisions made and a known understanding of what we are de-prioritising when prioritising new initiatives. 
• Intake quality. Projects entering with a complete brief and named owner; low rate of major scope rework after kickoff.

These measures tighten over the first months as flow builds and a baseline is established. Internal cycle time — time spent in the stages PawaPay controls, measured separately from external wait — is the initiative’s longer-term north star that this role stewards, reviewed at six months. Alongside the metrics, success means the teams who do the work experience you as someone who makes their projects easier, not as overhead who chases them.

What we are looking for

• Experience. Significant experience delivering and coordinating complex, cross-functional projects — ideally in fintech, payments, or another regulated, partner-dependent environment.
• Operator, not administrator. A track record of bringing order to ambiguity: standing up ways of working, driving adoption, and holding discipline without formal authority over the people involved.
• Tooling and AI. Fluency with ClickUp (or a comparable platform) and Slack, plus confidence with Google Workspace. AI-native in how you work — you use tools like Claude to reduce manual effort, not to replace judgement.
• Domain. Experience delivering merchant integrations, client onboarding or API implementation projects is highly desirable; experience across multiple African markets is a plus.
• Method. Relevant certification (PMP, PRINCE2, AgilePM, Scrum) is welcome but secondary to demonstrated ability to make delivery work in a fast-moving, dependency-heavy business.

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.