Full Stack Software Engineer at Code for Africa

About the Role

• Do you want to help build digital tools that strengthen our democracies and empower citizens? We are recruiting for a Full Stack Software Engineer to join our civic technology lab to help build digital tools that strengthen our democracies and empower citizens.
• Candidates must have demonstrable experience in shipping applications with delightful user experience, solid computer science fundamentals in object oriented programming, and strong understanding of interfaces between front-end and back-end stacks.
• CfA is a non-profit advocate for open source software (along with open data), and the successful candidate will therefore be required to help champion these principles by adopting best practices and helping document all our technologies to help others reuse it free of charge. Also in keeping with CfA’s values, you will be expected to regularly interact with the wider civic tech community, as well as CfA’s grantees and partners, to share insights and offer guidance.
• The successful candidates will work as part of a multinational and multilingual team using digital collaboration tools to create content for a global audience and international media partners.
• The successful candidate will join CfA’s technology team, the TechLab, as a Full Stack Software Engineer. The team is distributed across east/west Africa, and benchmarks itself on similar civic technology initiatives elsewhere in the world that build digital democracy solutions.
• The TechLab spearheads CfA’s design and development of all digital services for the organisation, and its external human rights defending partner organisations. This includes digital infrastructure, such CfA’s open data portal (the largest non-government data source in Africa) and machine learning or natural language processing analysis tools (such as https://civicsignal.africa/), as well as deploying and maintaining our operating systems and our public-facing web platforms or digital tools/widgets (such as https://taxclock.pesacheck.org/).
• In this role you will be responsible for the overall development and implementation of front and back-end software services and applications. This means you will impact the entire software development cycle and delivery from design to deployment. Additionally, you will develop and maintain software across the entire tech stack including UI, backend, and infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

• Meeting with a cross-functional team (architects, UX designers, product owners and other software engineers) to define the scope and scale of software projects.
• Partner with a cross-functional team to design, code, test, and operate web services, applications, and APIs that are performant, reliable, secure, responsive, and accessible.
• Make engineering investments and build reusable components to ship faster with higher quality and consistency.
• Growth mindset to learn, seek diverse viewpoints, and stay current with industry trends and techniques.
• Writing technical documents.

Requirements
Minimum requirements include:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent Engineering discipline
• 2+ years of non-internship professional software development experience
• Full stack experience and passionate about front-end (Python, SQL, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and/or TypeScript, node.js).
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Preferred:
Candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:

• Experience with React, Next.js, HTTP/2, PWA, and cross-platform development.
• Experience with using data visualisation technologies such as D3 and Vega 
• Ability to learn other programming languages and technologies as needed.

Language and Location Requirements:

• Location: CfA has labs located in Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. However the role can be performed remotely, and applicants across Africa will therefore be considered.
• Languages: English
• Preferred but not required: Arabic, French, KiSwahili or any other major language spoken in Africa.

What We Offer

• A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth, both in terms of career path and public stature.
• A dynamic workplace, with a transnational team, occasional international travel, and generous vacation benefits.
• Ongoing opportunities to learn new cutting-edge skills and techniques/technologies to future-proof yourself in a rapidly evolving industry.
• A chance to shine on a global stage, writing for international audiences and interacting with colleagues around the world.