Founders Associate - AI
Taptap Send
Location
Dubai, London
Employment Type
Full time
Location Type
On-site
Department
No Department
About Us
We’re building the world’s leading cross-border fintech for emerging markets - empowering families, fueling local economies, and changing how millions access financial services.
Since our launch in 2019, we have transformed how money moves across borders with our operations spanning 6 out of 7 continents and covering both the busiest and most underserved (remittance) corridors. We tapped into a massive shift - from banks to phones - bringing digital finance to places where traditional systems never reached. The next stage of growth will fuel a network of services and products especially designed to make money more accessible to diaspora communities including local cards, and additional savings and payments features.
We’re growing fast, backed by world-class investors, and scaling a product that blends real world impact with cutting edge fintech innovation.
Here’s a little more:
Founded by Harvard grads and 3-time founders who previously built Segovia (acquired) and GiveDirectly (>$300M revenue, fastest-growing NGO in the world)
Backed by top investors including Spark Capital, Canaan, Reid Hoffman, Breyer Capital, Unbound, Wamda, and more
Built by global top performers from Bain, Google, McKinsey, Uber, Checkout, Bolt, and beyond - we move fast, stay humble, and care deeply about our mission
Truly global team - 250+ people, 50+ nationalities, 50+ languages
Guided by our values - ownership, impact, humility, and heart - in deed, not just word
About the Role
TapTap Send is looking for someone to fundamentally change how the company works with AI. This isn't a product role - it's an operational transformation role. You'll work directly with the CEO and founding team to identify high-leverage opportunities across every function, build the bots and agents that capture them, and drive adoption until AI-augmented work becomes the default, not the exception.
We have 50+ people across research, data, operations, compliance, growth, and finance. Most workflows still run on human effort and manual processes. The right person will see that as a massive opportunity - not to replace people, but to make them dramatically more effective.
What You'll Do
Audit every team and function to map where AI agents, bots, and copilots can eliminate toil, accelerate decisions, or improve output quality
Build and deploy AI agents; from internal Slack bots and document processors to research copilots and automated QA pipelines - using the best available tools (Claude, GPT, open-source models, custom fine-tunes)
Own the full stack: scoping, prototyping, building, deploying, measuring impact, iterating. You ship, you don't just advise
Design and run an internal AI adoption programme - training, templates, prompt libraries, office hours; that gets every team using AI tools confidently within their workflows
Work with the CEO to set quarterly AI transformation targets and report progress against them. This role has board-level visibility
Evaluate and integrate third-party AI tooling (coding assistants, meeting summarizers, analytics copilots, etc.) and negotiate vendor relationships where needed
Build the connective tissue between teams: shared knowledge bases, RAG systems over internal docs, automated reporting, and cross-functional agent workflows
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Stay relentlessly current on the frontier; new models, new capabilities, new patterns and translate that into practical internal applications within days, not months
Requirements
Deep hands-on experience building AI-powered tools and agents: not just using ChatGPT, but architecting multi-step pipelines, RAG systems, and autonomous workflows
Strong engineering fundamentals: you can write production code, set up infrastructure, and debug at 2am if needed. Python is table stakes; experience with LLM APIs, vector databases, and orchestration frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI, etc.) is expected
A bias for speed and pragmatism over perfection: You'd rather ship a working bot in a week than spec a platform for six months
Exceptional communication skills: you'll need to sell AI adoption to skeptical teams, train non-technical users, and present to the board
Experience working in a fast-moving startup or scale-up environment, ideally fintech or financial services
A genuine obsession with AI and what it can do: You follow the space daily, you've built side projects, you have strong opinions on which models are best for which tasks
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Comfort with ambiguity and a self-starting mentality. This role doesn't have a playbook - you'll write it
Nice to Have
Experience leading or managing a small team (this role may grow into a team lead)
Background in data science, ML engineering, or quantitative research
Familiarity with compliance and regulatory environments - understanding what can and can't be automated in financial services
Experience with MCP (Model Context Protocol), agent-to-agent communication, or building tools that plug into existing SaaS platforms
Prior experience at a remittance, payments, or neobank company
Taptap Values
Impact first
Team next
Accept reality
Propose solutions
Win with grit
Be proactively candid, with yourself and others
Love the particular
Own it
Create positive energy
Maybe, even have fun
Taptap Send is an equal opportunity employer dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. All employment decisions are decided on the basis of qualifications, experience and business need. We strongly encourage applications who are members of underrepresented communities to apply.
If you require reasonable adjustments to be made during the recruitment process, please do not hesitate to let us know. Any information you provide us in this respect will only be used to accommodate your requirements.
Note: we recognize imposter syndrome is real - any candidate that does not perfectly fit every characteristic of this role is still strongly encouraged to apply.