Applied AI Scientist - LLMs and Voice

About the Role

Wave Mobile Money is hiring an Applied AI Scientist to build autonomous voice and digital agents that handle more than ten million monthly customer interactions across West Africa. The role is fully remote, open to candidates based in the US, Canada, UK, Spain, Kenya, Ghana, or Wave’s African operating markets including Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, and Burkina Faso.

Wave is one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in Africa, processing hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions monthly for users who are largely unbanked. The salary is up to USD 227,900 annually, varying by seniority and location, plus a generous equity package. This is a rare opportunity to work on AI systems serving large-scale users in low-resource language and low-connectivity contexts.

Responsibilities

• Architect, evaluate, and optimize autonomous voice and digital agents handling millions of customer interactions per month
• Build AI systems that function in edge cases including poor connectivity, low-literacy environments, and regional language variation
• Evaluate and integrate the latest voice and text AI models from the research frontier
• Own problems end-to-end from initial discovery through production deployment and monitoring
• Work closely with operations and product teams to identify high-impact automation opportunities

Requirements

• Five or more years of AI/ML engineering experience
• Strong Python and backend engineering skills
• Hands-on LLM experience including prompt engineering, RAG pipelines, fine-tuning, and agent orchestration
• Proven track record shipping ML models to production
• Fluent English; French bilingualism is a bonus given Wave’s West African operations

Nice to Have

• Background in speech recognition, text-to-speech, or conversational AI systems
• Experience with low-resource or African language NLP
• Familiarity with mobile money or fintech compliance requirements
• Research experience in voice AI or LLMs

How to Apply

Apply directly through Wave’s careers page at wave.com/en/careers using the role titled “Applied AI Scientist - LLMs and Voice.” No deadline is listed; positions are filled on a rolling basis. Benefits include subsidized health insurance, six months paid parental leave, USD 10,000 annual charitable donation matching, and a USD 1,200 yearly coworking stipend.