Senior Software Engineer

Brief Description

We are looking for a talented Senior Software Engineer with 5+ years of experience building custom mission-critical enterprise systems that will enable us to manage a network of hundreds and eventually thousands of schools.

About this position

Bridge International Academies is a startup revolutionizing education across Africa with a truly unique business model. 

The company has launched a large-scale franchise-like network of ultra low-cost for-profit private primary schools across Africa. 

Our schools profitably deliver highquality education for less than $4 per child per month, enabling local school managers to operate their school businesses profitably, while creating a highly successful business at the central level.

We now have 84 schools in Kenya, and plan to rapidly scale the company to serve more than 1 million students.

We have and are continuing to develop one of the most sophisticated operational approaches to providing affordable education to MILLIONS of children in one of the most challenging environments in the world! 

Our success relies on our “School in a Box”, a sophisticated set of custom developed systems, tools and processes (think McDonalds or Starbucks) that are used by all School Managers, as well as by support teams at Headquarters to audit, monitor and support all of our schools. 

While the end-user (School Manager) technology at the school is limited to paper and a mobile phone, all of our systems and processes are underpinned by a sophisticated set of supporting and enabling technologies that allows schools to operate cost effectively and efficiently, with oversight by headquarters.

We are looking for a full time Senior Software Engineer with responsibilities of:

• Leading the development of custom enterprise software to power and improve the efficiency of our rigorous processes at both our schools and headquarters
• Architecture, designing, implementation and debugging
• Integration of our custom systems with off the shelf software
• Database design and optimization
• Requirements analysis and user interface design
• Supporting in-house users of our custom software and problem solving

About You

• You have BA/BS in Computer Science or related technical field
• You are an exceptionally talented coder with knowledge of multiple programming languages and frameworks
• You have a minimum of 5 years experience developing custom-built software to enable internal business processes.
• You have experience integrating off-the-shelf and custom-built technologies
• You have developed and supported systems that are critical to the day to day operations of medium and large organizations (ERP, financial systems, CRM…)
• You have designed and supported large databases and are skilled at writing SQL
• You have experience taking software projects through the entire software lifecycle (requirements analysis, design, implementation, deployment, post deployment support)
• You work well as part of a team and like to both teach and learn from others
• You are familiar with professional software development practices such as source code control, defect tracking, unit testing and code reviews
• You love to write code and solve challenging problems
• You function well in a fast-paced, informal environment where constant change is the norm and the bar for quality is set high
• You are in expert in two or more of the following technologies:

C#/.NET development
MS SQL Server
PHP/MySQL web development
SugarCRM
Android development

Location

The job is based in our headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya.
Examples of our Software Needs

The following are examples some of the software projects that are currently under development or consideration:

• Automated Student Payment Information System - manages billing, automatically updates database with data from banks and mobile payment systems, provides tools for operator to correct and assign payments, and uses SMS interface to send coded updates to Schools, and receive interactive SMS queries and remote error correction.
• Customized integrated financial system - taking customizable financial package and integrating with payment information system, reporting tools, and developing additional tools for automated budget tracking, and SMS-based payment requests and school payroll.
• Data Management and Dashboard/Reporting Tools for HQ staff to support schools - we are developing tools that collect key performance data and provide dashboards/reports to allow support teams to monitor progress of our schools.
• Android Mobile Phone App - We are porting of many of our paper-based processes at our schools to a mobile phone app on the Android platform to streamline school operations.

In order to be considered for this position all candidates must register and upload their CV’s on our website at www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted