Regional Lead Developer At Solidaridad East & Central Africa

Job title: Regional Lead Developer

Level Available: Mid to Senior

Reporting Line: Managing Director

Objective

The Regional Lead Developer provides leadership for the planning, deployment, capacity building, adoption, operational excellence, support, maintenance, and enhancement of regional and country digital systems inclusive of those used in field projects. The Regional Lead Developer is accountable for ensuring that the regional digital needs are met. Solidaridad builds a range of digital solutions and tools that are directed externally (e.g. at farmers, producers, workers, miners, MSMEs) and/or internally (to improve learning, efficiency or effectiveness within the organization). We develop both web and mobile applications.

Position in the Organization

The Regional Lead Developer reports to the Managing Director of Solidaridad Eastern and Central Africa Expertise Centre. S/he also works closely with the Head of Programmes and the country office teams.

Main tasks and result areas:

1. Lead the implementation, management, and expansion of the digital strategy in the region.
2. Deliver strategic and tactical planning, development, evaluation, and coordination of information and technology systems in East and Central Africa.
3. Establish guidelines and programs for effective information technology management.
4. Lead and coordinate technical decisions on projects and organizational tools.
5. Evaluate technical design for custom solutions – act as a sounding board for management and programmatic team members.
6. Lead, develop, maintain and scale all the shared (internal and external) services.
7. Together with the project teams, develop appropriate digital architecture to meet the needs of the project while consolidating the tools and data across ECA projects..
8. Identify cross-cutting ]data and application needs that can be moved onto internal data platforms and project agnostic applications including ODK, Jifunze and others.
9. Provide technical and strategic direction to the region’s executive management and programmatic teams.
10. Research and assess the trade-offs (build vs buy) of all technology choices (e.g. closed systems, open source etc).
11. Collaborate with the region’s quality and operations teams to develop better projects and products that are more reliable and maintainable.

Knowledge and experience:

1. Relevant academic level education, Master’s or higher – in relevant fields (e.g. Computer Science or any equivalent combination of training and experience, Project Management).
2. At least six (6) years of experience as a software developer and a good understanding of relational databases management systems (RDBMS – preferably Postgres) as well as one or more Operating Systems (e.g Linux, Windows, etc)
3. Familiar with common IT methodologies (SDLC, ITIL, ITSM).
4. Mentoring junior- and mid-level developers on good software development practices.
5. You have experience in designing or developing complex systems in combination with debugging / troubleshooting capabilities.
6. Ability to write programs of scripts in the current software development languages for both web and mobile (a bonus).

Specific job requirements:

1. Strong organizational skills with a problem-solving attitude.
2. Strong ability to deliver a working product and meet a deadline.
3. You have programming knowledge as well as other skill-sets (e.g. agile teams/ organizations, project management, budgeting).
4. Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
5. Attention to detail
6. You have a high proficiency with one or more of the following technologies: such as Java, JavaScript (Node.js), Python, Relational Database Management Systems such as SQL Server or Oracle, Entity Framework, and Object Oriented Programming, Dependency Injection/Inversion of Control.
7. You have experience in fast-growing organizations and/or the lean start-up methodology.