Systems Architect - Data.FI (Consultant) at Palladium Group

Duration: August 5 - September 30, 2019
Travel: 50% travel to surge states

Project Overview and Role
Palladium develops and delivers innovative, locally relevant, evidence-based solutions to improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Since 1971, we have assisted governmental and non-governmental agencies, foundations, and the private sector by designing, implementing, and evaluating programs in HIV/AIDS, sexual and reproductive health, population and family planning, maternal and child health, infectious diseases, and gender. Palladium has deep expertise in policy and advocacy, research and strategic information, health markets and private sector engagement, modeling and economic analysis, patient monitoring and management/HMIS, strategic consulting, and program management.

Background
USAID has selected Palladium to implement the Translating Data for Implementation (Data.fi) award. DFI is a $180 million, 5-year project which will serve as USAID’s primary mechanism for data, technology, and health information systems to support HIV activities across strategic PEPFAR countries.  Data.fi is part of a suite of large scale global HIV programs that USAID has recently awarded and represents the next generation of HIV/AIDS programs. Data.fi will play a key role in USAID’s goals of helping partner countries on their Journey to Self-Reliance and transitioning local organizations to prime recipients of USG funding.

The overall goal of the Data.fi project is to improve global, regional and national in-depth analyses of HIV epidemiologic and program data that can be directly applied to expedite the achievement of PEPFAR targets to attain and sustain control of the HIV epidemic.  The focus also includes directly supporting host country governments and implementing partners to further enhance existing health information system platforms to inform management responses to well-defined gaps in HIV/AIDS programming. 

In order to ensure rapid access to high quality data, Data.fi will work towards: accelerating data utilization to rapidly course correct and take to scale cost-effective and impactful activities, models and approaches required to attain and maintain HIV epidemic control; scaling and optimizing in-country health information system capabilities to collect, exchange, adapt, govern, and visualize information in order to track the attainment and maintenance of HIV epidemic control; and supporting the transition of prime funding and implementation to capable local partners in order to meet the PEPFAR goal of 70% of funding to local partners by 2020.

Purpose of Position

• Palladium is seeking a Systems Architect to enhance real time access to PEPFAR data and achievement of targets to attain and sustain control of the HIV epidemic.  
• The Systems Architect will support the development and roll out of High Frequency Reporting as well as provide informatics backstopping to the FMOH for Health Facility Registry roll out.

Responsibilities

• Support the collection of System Specifications for the design of APPR 2.0 and automation process to extract data from implementing partners information systems
• Conduct training for implementing partners and Data Use Field Teams to enter, analyze and export data
• Establish first tier help desk services for APPR 2.0 and the Health Facility Registry
• Provide backstopping to FMOH to ensure completeness of health facility data 
• In collaboration with FMOH ICT team, develop disaster recovery plan

Candidate Requirements

• A Master’s degree in Information Science, Data Science, Statistics, Health Informatics, or a related field.
• At least 8 years’ experience advising on health management information systems or routine health information systems.
• Experience working with national health programs including HMIS and DHIS 2.
• Experienced in maintaining relational databases, troubleshooting, and providing systems enhancements.
• Extensive experience of back end and front-end systems development using PHP and Java.
• Working experience of Sphinx Search.
• Knowledge of REST API and JSON.
• Experience testing and troubleshooting systems.
• Experience and knowledge of user interface design.
• Experience using GitHub/Bitbucket and bug tracking systems such as Mantis BT or JIRA Helpdesk.
• Expertise in Technical Lan Technology, Apache tomcat, JavaScript programming, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and CSS.
• Knowledge of Model View Controller (MVC) design pattern.
• Work well under pressure, skilled in crisis management, and problem solving.
• Ability to achieve consensus among senior stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal skills in English are required to communicate technical information to audiences with varying levels of technical expertise.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working in Nigeria, preferably with the Ministry of Health and the DHPRS