Partnerships Associate

Zuba; Greater London; On-site; GBP 42,000 - 66,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Central London office

Global exposure from week one

Front-row seat to building payment-in-

Job summary

Zuba is seeking a Partnerships Associate to join its network of banks, payout partners, and liquidity providers moving money across emerging markets. You will help scope, onboard, and manage partners, working directly with the CEO and Head of Network.

This early-career role offers exposure to live negotiations, onboarding processes that gate real money movement, and a steep learning curve in a small team where you can take on meaningful, corridor-building work.

Qualifications

• 1-4 years in fintech, consulting, IB, PE, or an exceptional graduate with ownership and drive.
• You are numerate and analytical with strong communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Launch corridors by researching counterparties, modeling deal economics, and negotiating commercials.
• Run partner onboarding end to end with due diligence, KYB coordination, documentation and integration tracking.
• Track partner performance across rates, SLAs, capacity, and settlement timeliness.

Job description

We’re building the global payment network for money moving into, across, and out of the world’s emerging markets: instant, transparent, and affordable, with stablecoin rails under the hood. We’re backed by multiple unicorn fintech founders and some incredible investors like EWOR, Triple A, Digital Currency Group, Entourage, and Raba.

We’re early enough that the people joining today define how this company works, and proven enough that the work is real from day one: live partners, live corridors, real money. The problems are hard, the surface area is global, and the prize is a rebuild of how money moves between the fastest-growing markets on earth.

About the role

We are looking for a Partnerships Associate to sit at the centre of Zuba's partner network: the banks, payout partners, and liquidity providers that move our money across emerging markets, from Africa to the Gulf to Asia. You will help scope, onboard, and manage those partners, working directly with the CEO and the Head of Network.

This is an early-career role with an unusually steep curve. Within your first months you will be inside live partner negotiations, running onboarding processes that gate real money movement, and building the analysis that decides which corridors we open next. In a small team there is nowhere to hide and no ceiling on what you can take on. People who do this role well end up owning corridors.

What you’ll do

• Launch corridors. Scope the market, research counterparties, model deal economics, and negotiate commercials.
• Run partner onboarding end to end. Due diligence packs, KYB coordination, documentation, and integration tracking, from first call to first live transaction. You keep every thread moving.
• Track partner performance. Rates, SLAs, capacity, and settlement timeliness across the live stack. Spot the problem before it becomes an incident, and escape with the facts already assembled.
• Own the source of truth. Know what good pricing looks like in every corridor, and keep the comparison current on status, terms, and contracts. Every negotiation starts from your evidence, and every partner question is answered by your data.
• Do what the corridor needs. Small team, real money, moving fast. Some weeks that means chasing a stuck integration; others it means flying to a new market and building our partner stack there from scratch.

Who you are

• You’re early in an impressive career. 1-4 years in fintech, consulting, IB, PE, or a high-growth startup, or an exceptional graduate who can show us evidence of ownership and drive.
• You’re operationally relentless. You run multiple threads without dropping any, spot what’s broken, and fix it without being asked. People trust that anything handed to you gets done.
• You’re numerate and analytical. You’re comfortable in spreadsheets, you sanity-check figures instinctively, and you can turn messy data into a clear comparison.
• You're an exceptional communicator. Much of this role is crisp communication with the team and partners. You write clearly, build relationships quickly, and can represent Zuba externally with confidence.
• You thrive in ambiguity. You’re comfortable structuring problems, building the playbook from scratch, and balancing multiple priorities in real time, with real stakes.
• You are genuinely curious about emerging markets, payments infrastructure, and stablecoin rails, because you will be learning constantly.
• Bonus: Exposure to African markets. Familiarity with stablecoins or crypto infrastructure. A second language relevant to our corridors.

What we offer

• Central London office
• Global exposure from week one: real partners, real money, real stakes
• A front-row seat to building payment infrastructure, working directly with the founders

Our hiring process

We keep it fast and transparent.

• Intro chat (30 mins) with Josiah (CEO & Co-Founder). An informal conversation about your background, what draws you to payments, and what you are looking for.
• Case deep dive (45 mins). A practical working session on a realistic partner or corridor problem. We care about how you think, structure, and communicate, not whether you know our industry yet.
• Work trial (2 days, paid). The best way to see if we are a good fit is to work together, and we pay for your time. You'll spend two days with us at our Central London office, working on real problems alongside the team.
• Offer. If all goes well, we will extend an offer and cannot wait to welcome you aboard!