ziina - Operations & Strategy Manager

• You won't be managing BAU - you'll be building the future. • AS AN OPERATIONS & STRATEGY MANAGER AT ZIINA YOU WILL: • Own and drive complex payments infrastructure projects end-to-end, from scoping through to regulatory approval, commercial negotiation, and live launch • Navigate licensing and regulatory processes coordinating with relevant authorities, scheme representatives, and external counsel • Build and maintain rigorous project frameworks - timelines, milestones, risk registers, and decision logs - ensuring nothing falls through the cracks across a large, cross-functional team • Work hand-in-hand with engineering to bridge the gap between business requirements and technical execution, translating complex ops constraints into actionable specs • Lead vendor evaluation and commercial negotiations, building the business cases and financial models needed to support major infrastructure decisions • Turn data into decisions - use SQL, Excel, and other analytical tools to size opportunities, track progress, and surface risks before they become problems • Manage senior external relationships - with payment schemes, regulators, technology partners, and financial institutions - with professionalism and precision • Support the broader payments and operations roadmap, picking up high-priority projects beyond your primary mandate as Ziina continues to scale • 2–4 years of experience in a fast-paced fintech, payments company, startup, or financial institution • Strong track record of owning and delivering complex, cross-functional projects — you've driven something hard from start to finish and have the scars to prove it • Experience navigating regulatory and licensing processes — whether payments, financial services, or another regulated domain • Comfortable working directly with engineering and technical teams — you can hold your own in a technical conversation, align on requirements, and keep delivery on track without being a bottleneck • Analytically sharp - you're fluent in SQL, comfortable building dashboards, and don't wait for someone else to pull the numbers; you come with the analysis and a point of view • You thrive on creating order and structure out of ambiguity • You take initiative and have a strong bias towards action • You have high integrity and a team-first mentality • You question assumptions others take for granted and use first principles thinking • You live in, or are willing to move to, the UAE • WHAT WOULD AMAZE US • Prior experience working at or with a payment acquirer, payment facilitator, or card scheme (Visa, Mastercard, etc.) • Familiarity with acquiring economics — interchange, scheme fees, BIN sponsorship, or settlement flows • Experience working with UAE or GCC regulators (CBUAE, ADGM, DFSA) or regional financial institutions