Lead User Researcher

About the Company:

Capi helps businesses in Africa pay their international suppliers. We’ve raised over $18m from Creandum, Y Combinator, General Catalyst, Firstminute, Janngo, Kima Ventures, and some great angels from Revolut, Checkout, Stripe, Onfido, and Remitly.

Capi was founded by Mitch Riley, Scott Liddle, and Tom Watson. Mitch and Scott were COO/CFO/GC and CRO/CMO at Taptap Send, a remittance unicorn, and have spent two decades between them working in emerging markets. Tom is a third-time founder having founded Hubble and P4SD.

Role Overview

As our first User Researcher, you will be a key champion for user-centered design and research across the entire company. You'll play a crucial role in helping us understand the needs of businesses in Africa as we transform how $670 billion in cross-border business payments are made each year.

Working closely with product & engineering, and commercial teams, you'll lead our user research initiatives, conducting both in-person and remote research with our customers across Africa. You'll be responsible for gathering, analysing, and synthesising user insights to inform product decisions and business strategy.

This role requires a unique blend of strategic thinking and hands-on execution, with approximately 50% of your time dedicated to core product research processes and 50% to special projects. You'll help teams across the company - from compliance to product - better understand our users' needs, behaviours, and pain points.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and execute research studies to understand user needs, behaviors, and experiences with international payments
• Champion user research methodologies and best practices across the company
• Develop and maintain our user research framework and processes
• Conduct field research in our target markets, working directly with customers to understand their contexts and needs
• Synthesise research findings into actionable insights that drive product and business decisions
• Build and maintain our user research repository to ensure insights are accessible and actionable across the company
• Collaborate with product, design, and commercial teams to identify research opportunities and priorities

Requirements

• 4+ years of experience as a User Researcher in a high-performing environment, ideally in an early stage startup
• Fluent in French and English
• Excellent communication and organisational skills
• Work well autonomously; you’re a self-starter
• Intellectually curious by nature
• Extensive qualitative research experience
• Willingness to travel frequently
• Based in London, Paris, West Africa (Dakar or Abidjan)

Nice to Haves

• You’ve worked with emerging markets before

Additional Information

• This is a full-time position with competitive salary, share options, and benefits (benefits specific to location)
• If based in London or Paris, we require 3 days a week in office
• Ideal Start date: March 2025 (we realise that a notice period may need to be fulfilled and can adjust accordingly)

Capi is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes candidates from diverse backgrounds.