Head of Midas
MoMo from MTN · Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Tailor my CV for this job — freeHead of Midas
The joint venture brings together MTN Fintech’s deep market reach across Africa and Alipay’s global technology, platform and digital payments expertise to deliver a more resilient, innovative and future-fit fintech operating model.We at MIDAS believe this is a game changer in terms of our business strategy. We are looking at an incumbent to join us as we build a successful business together.As part of your portfolio as Head of MIDAS, you will be responsible to.:Hold full executive accountability for the joint venture established between MTN Group Fintech and Alipay to build, deploy and operate the digital wallet platform on which MTN's fintech business will run for the next decade. The mandate spans the construction of the core platform, the migration of fourteen operating companies from the legacy USSD environment, and the reliable operation of the platform once markets are live.Lead an enterprise deliberately distributed across three locations with three distinct mandates. The Dubai International Financial Centre holding company governs, contracts and accounts for the joint venture. The China hub builds and evolves the core platform alongside Alipay engineering. The Ghana delivery hub migrates markets and runs them afterwards. Holding these together as one delivery system, without allowing any location to drift into a second corporate centre, is the central organisational challenge of the role.Operate inside a deliberate constraint. MTN Group Fintech retains functional authority for product strategy, technology strategy, commercial accountability and enterprise prioritisation. Midas provides the dedicated execution capacity to deliver against those decisions. The incumbent is expected to strengthen Group Fintech's ability to execute rather than to build a parallel hierarchy, and to ensure that operating companies continue to experience a single Group relationship.Carry a shareholder dimension that materially exceeds a conventional subsidiary leadership position. Two shareholders with different commercial models, engineering cultures and governance expectations must be held in a single working arrangement. The incumbent leads the shareholder interface jointly with the Chief Financial Officer, manages reserved matters and funding through the Midas Board, and protects the intellectual property perimeter that determines what MTN retains outside the joint venture.The role sits at the intersection of a platform build, a live migration programme and a running financial services business. Decisions routinely trade platform quality against migration pace, shareholder expectation against market readiness, and near term cost against long term platform economics. The incumbent is accountable for making those trade offs, defending them to the Board, and reversing them when evidence changes.This is an executive leadership role requiring commercial judgement at enterprise scale, genuine platform and technology fluency, joint venture and multi jurisdiction governance experience, and the personal authority to hold a distributed leadership team to account across cultural, functional and geographic boundariesThe role is also the guardian of the joint venture's reputation. Midas will be judged by regulators, by operating company boards and by customers on whether the platform works, whether migrations are handled safely and whether commitments are met. The incumbent is accountable for the standard of behaviour, disclosure and delivery that reputation rests on.The incumbent must have the following:Minimum 4 year tertiary degree in Engineering, Technology, Information Technology or a related discipline.Postgraduate qualification such as an MBA or equivalent.Minimum 15 years experience across financial services, fintech, payments, telecommunications or platform technology, including at least 5 years at executive committee level.Proven accountability for a profit and loss, a major platform programme or a business unit of comparable scale, complexity and public visibility.Experience leading a joint venture, partnership or multi shareholder entity, including board proceedings, reserved matters and shareholder negotiation.Experience of large scale core system replacement or platform migration across multiple countries and regulatory regimes.Experience operating across several jurisdictions and cultures, ideally including Africa, the Middle East and Asia.Track record of building and leading executive teams across distributed locations and of attracting senior talent into new ventures.Experience of regulated financial services environments and engagement with supervisory authorities.Experience of setting and defending a commercial charging model with internal customers.Experience of leading an organisation through a period of rapid scaling from a small base.Experience of representing a business publicly, including to media and industry forums.What will give an edge to your application:Executive development, corporate governance or directorship programme.Continuing professional development in digital payments, platform businesses or joint venture governance.Board or director level governance training.Ready to make and drive the change with us? Apply now!Closing date: 03 November 2026. Late applications will not be accepted.Should you not hear from us within 2 weeks of closing date, please consider your application unsuccessful.