Sajida Shaikh

Rapyd is a leading global Fintech-as-a-Service platform that provides API-based infrastructure for businesses to embed payments, wallets, and cross-border payout functionality across over 100 countries.

- Inaugural People Leader for the Dubai DIFC entity, establishing HR operations, governance, and workforce frameworks for a regional team that transitioned from 130 → 85 employees following a workforce reduction.

- Led and developed a regional HR team across Talent Acquisition and HR Operations, owning workforce planning, recruitment execution, employee relations, and reward in a high-growth, high-pressure environment.

- Personally accountable for end-to-end recruitment delivery, partnering with leaders to prioritise critical roles, manage hiring trade-offs under budget constraints, and move at pace without compromising quality.

- Led People strategy for Moment, a Rapyd-backed African payments venture, supporting regulatory approval and HR setup for market entry across emerging markets.

- Implemented employee experience and retention initiatives that sustained voluntary turnover below 5% over three years in Dubai.

- Introduced leadership development and coaching frameworks to strengthen manager capability and performance outcomes.

- Secured DFSA regulatory approval through compliant policy design, audit preparation, and governance documentation in partnership with Compliance.

- Owned a $250k annual budget covering Learning, benefits, and engagement initiatives, delivering measurable improvements in performance and engagement.

- Led complex employee relations investigations including grievances, misconduct cases, and disciplinary processes across multiple jurisdictions, ensuring procedural fairness and legal compliance.

- Managed end-to-end recruitment campaigns for technical and commercial roles across multiple countries, utilising diverse sourcing channels (LinkedIn, job boards, university partnerships, agencies) and leveraging recruitment dashboards to track metrics including time-to-hire, source effectiveness, and candidate conversion rates.

Head of People / People Manager (UAE / KSA / Egypt Regions)

Appointed as the first People Manager within the Middle East’s leading Buy-Now-Pay-Later provider. Orchestrate daily people management operations (including talent acquisition, office management, policy creation, payroll administration, and culture change) while project managing implementation of HR structures and initiatives within a fast-paced and dynamic FinTech start-up.

Key Contributions:
Maximised staff happiness and development having optimised employee lifecycle - from attraction and recruitment, employee experience, engagement and performance feedback while managing employee surveys and temperature checks.
Developed progression frameworks allowing staff to thrive; fairly and competitively rewarded staff while embedding a culture of high-performance, continued development and succession planning.
Recruited, onboarded and trained Hiring Managers, as well as CxO-level staff, such as Chief People Officer (CPO), Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) and Cyber Security Director.
Educated senior stakeholders on organisational culture change, Employee Relations (ER) and engagement, and talent acquisition as a trusted advisor and influential leader.
Facilitated process definition and high-level strategy creation supporting a period of rapid business growth (from 30 to 300 FTEs) across UAE, Russia, KSA, Egypt and remotely.
Created and championed internship programmes having fostered and maintained relationships with regional universities.
Coordinated office extension and refurbishment, including sourcing of construction companies and Interior Designers.
Oversaw management of critical people systems, including HiBob, Greenhouse and regional HRIS tooling, Bayzat.
Optimised employee wellbeing via management of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and wellness initiatives.
Improved HR and recruitment efficiency having project managed implementation of HRIS and ATS systems.
Sensitively managed ER; from disciplinaries and grievances, to redundancies and terminations.

Founding member of People Team of this rapidly-growing FinTech company operating in UK and USA - servicing over 6 million customers and employing over 1, 600 staff members globally. Spearheaded hiring, development and motivation of Talent Acquisition team recruiting 16 staff. Orchestrated full recruitment life cycle, covering headcount planning, business needs assessment, sourcing strategies, market insights analysis, salary benchmarking and on-boarding.

Key Contributions:
Strategically directed recruitment of 700+ employees and C-level leaders, including Chief People Officer, Chief Risk Officer, Global VP Reward, Head of Diversity & Inclusion, and Head of L&D.
Trusted HR Advisor and Business Partner covering recruitment, employee engagement, wellbeing, values, and motivation.
Supported growth strategy of scaling up from 40 to 1, 600+ employees; defined HR strategies and tactics.
Teamed with the board to source and hire critical positions, including Chair and Non-Executive Directors.
Harnessed gravitas and influential leadership skills to present to Board-level stakeholders and investors.
Managed full lifecycle of projects encompassing sourcing and implementation of ATS system.
Drove insights and decision-making, applying a data-driven approach to enhance accuracy.
Reduced staff attrition through effective leadership and coaching as Interim Team Leader.

Graduate and Early Engagement Talent