Jobs at Code for Africa (CfA)

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.

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About the Role

• We are recruiting for a mid-level role as an Online Courseware Developer with strong pedagogical expertise and extensive experience in curriculum creation (using e-learning technologies)..
• The candidate will join our pan-African Data Academy and may be based at any of our hubs in Kenya, Nigeria or South Africa. We are also open to exceptional applicants from elsewhere in Africa.
• CfA’s Data Academy, which spearheads our training partnerships and data analysis and storytelling initiatives. It also includes CfA communities such as the WanaData women data science/storytelling network and the africanDRONE civic drone community, as well as the sensors.AFRICA sensor journalism initiative, with a network of more than 50+ newsroom and university partners across Africa. The Data Academy is also custodian of other major CfA public infrastructure, such as the continent’s largest open data portal, open.AFRICA, and Africa’s largest census data portal, HURUMap.
• The Courseware Developer will be CfA’s in-house ‘architect’ for designing the structure of training courses. The candidate reports to the Data Academy’s Senior Programme Manager and will work with the support of CfA’s wider Data Academy team of editorial experts, data analysts and digital designers in 20 African countries, as well as external domain experts in order to achieve set programmes or module objectives. The candidate will champion CfA’s Academy Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), ensuring that it is on par with the world’s best.
• The successful candidate will join CfA’s Data Academy team to lead a revamp/refresh of our existing MOOC platform, restructuring and updating existing courseware, while also improving the functionality and user experience on the platform (with support from CfA’s tech and content teams).
• A major focus for the role will be to build courses that are modular, with core lessons teaching key skills, complimented by elective modules that offer topic/tool specific add-on skills. CfA courseware is intended to be flexible enough to be easily customised or repackaged for different audiences by our in-country staff trainers or university partners. The MOOC courseware also serves as the master curricula for teaching kits for our in-person/offline training workshops, as well as template course materials for our university partners.
• CfA’s courseware developer will be responsible for benchmarking our learning materials on global best-practise, and will also lead our joint development of new courses with both internal and external stakeholders to create learning solutions.
• The candidate should have a strong strategic analysis and critical thinking skills, as our projects are varied and fast-paced, so you need to quickly understand and learn new things. You will need to possess a keen attention to detail and a good eye for both quality and aesthetics. You should be comfortable handling multiple tasks with multiple ongoing deadlines and should have previous experience working on the digital collaboration tools that CfA uses, such as Slack, Google Drive, and Trello.

Responsibilities
Your daily responsibilities will include:

• Conceptualising and designing master curricula, in consultation with CfA programme teams and external domain experts, for modular, task-driven experiential courses that function as both self-directed e-learning and as in-person courseware of instructors.
• Developing courseware support materials, including facilitator guides and user-manuals; participant materials and exercises/assignments; and course handouts/toolkits. 
• Repacking the master curriculum for offline/in-person presentation, including developing presentation slides (PowerPoint, etc) with instructor talking points/notes; class handouts and participant handbooks, etc.
• Cultivate and manage a pool of thematic experts that CfA can call upon to co-author courses and/or present flagship classes.
• Proactively measure user experience and participant trends/feedback to improve the quality and effectiveness of CfA courseware.
• Monitor overall usage/completion rates and trends for CfA’s online MOOC and other webinar-based learning programmes, to offer actionable insights to improve the effectiveness of CfA’s Academy programmes.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of the training courses 
• Monitor trends in teaching practices, and explore and recommend new technologies that will enhance Data Academy’s training model
• Advise CfA’s trainers on the following aspects of the training content: accessibility, readability, potential for learner engagement and fit with learning objectives.
• Work with CfA engagement team to promote CfA training programmes including the MOOC site to the wider public and increase traffic and engagement on the site.

Requirements
Minimum requirements include:

• Bachelor’s Degree or significant proven expertise in any related disciplines with equivalent combination of practical experience and professional training/certification in any of the following: Instructional Design and Learning Technologies, Computer Science, Education, Information Technology, or other closely related fields.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience in training development, creating blended learning solutions for both instructor-led and self-paced training programmes.
• Experience with using multimedia and online web instructional materials, especially for a web-based Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as WordPress’ LearnDash platform.
• Experience assessing training needs, writing lessons objectives, and storyboarding course outlines/learning journeys. 
• Ability to work creatively and accurately under pressure with excellent attention to detail.
• Ability to multitask and self-organise, and prioritise work when managing multiple timelines and schedules.
• Excellent leadership, team-building, and self-management skills.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.  

Preferred:
Preferred qualifications and skills include:

• Knowledge of data journalism and/or multimedia storytelling, or civic technology and civic engagement, or digital democracy approaches.
• Experience with developing courseware formats for new communication channels, including using mobile platforms as WhatsApp or equivalent social messaging platforms.
• Experience with creating or customising courseware content using InDesign (or equivalent tools), video scribe, audio/narration editing tools and other e-learning design technologies is also an asset.
• Expertise in adult learning and all aspects of instructional design for various formats, including instructor-led, self-directed e-learning, task-driven experiential learning, webinar-driven interactive learning, mobile optimised courseware, and various types of performance support.
• Willingness to teach others and learn/pioneer new techniques.
• Experience in remote collaboration tools, including Slack, Google Drive, and Trello to manage workflows.
• The ability to communicate and work effectively with curriculum or domain experts and project team members who work remotely and in different time zones.

Language and Location Requirements:

• Location: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria or anywhere else in Africa
• Languages: English
• Preferred but not required: French and/or Arabic.

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.