Founder's Associate

Local; Dubai; Hybrid; AED 360,000 - 660,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Unlimited annual leave

Hybrid working model

High ownership and exposure

Job summary

Local in Dubai is hiring a Founder’s Associate 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 for an exceptional early-career generalist based in the UAE, offering founder-level exposure and accelerated responsibility.

You will support across strategy, finance, investor relations, partnerships, and hiring, with ownership of critical cross-functional initiatives.

Qualifications

• 2–5 years of experience in a high‑performance environment.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• Structure complex, ambiguous problems into clear decisions.
• Prepare concise one‑pagers and decision memos for the Founder.
• Own the company priority tracker and coordinate/tighten deadlines.
• Facilitate weekly leadership meetings across the UAE and Bahrain teams.
• Represent the Founder in internal and external discussions with professionalism.

Skills

Problem structuring

Written communication

Analytical ability

Ownership mindset

English fluency

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Excel

Google Sheets

Google Docs/Slides

Notion

Slack

Job description

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, off‑boarding 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

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

• 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

• 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.