Senior Software Developer
Do you want to use your engineering skills to safeguard democracies and empower citizens across Africa?
Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancyfor a full-time Senior Software Engineer to join our TechLab.
Candidates must excel at juggling multiple priorities while shipping high‑quality code on time. You spot opportunities to automate repetitive tasks and document your processes so others can follow. When production issues arise, you can quickly triage, troubleshoot and trace problems to their root cause.
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.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a related technical discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
- Five or more years building production systems with Python plus either TypeScript or JavaScript.
- Experience deploying containerised services to at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP or Azure) using Docker/Dokku, Terraform or Pulumi.
- Framework fluency: Django REST (or FastAPI), Next.js (or similar React meta‑framework), and Vega-Lite (or similar data visualisation platforms such as D3.js).
- Proficiency with relational and document databases such as Postgres, MongoDB, and queueing systems like RabbitMQ.
- Working knowledge of observability stacks (Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry) and security best practices (OWASP, SSO, secrets management).
- Track record of leading project teams and shipping well‑tested, well‑documented code in an agile environment.
- Excellent written and verbal communication in English.
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- Master’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
- Experience with open‑source or civic‑tech projects, media or non‑profit environments.
- Hands-on experience with distributed task queues (Celery or Dask), data‑engineering pipelines (Airflow or Dagster), event orchestration (Prefect or Temporal) and geospatial stacks (PostGIS, GeoJSON, vector tiles).
- Experience building and deploying AI applications in production, with working knowledge of areas such as Large Language Models (LLMs), generative AI, and/or AI agent frameworks.
- French, Arabic, KiSwahili or other widely spoken African languages.
Language and Location Requirements:
- Location: This role is open to remote candidates across Africa. For those preferring an office environment, CfA has labs in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
- Languages: Professional fluency in English (written and verbal) is required.
- Preferred but not required: Proficiency in Arabic, French, KiSwahili, or other major African languages is a valuable asset.
About the Role:
The successful candidates will join the TechLab. The TechLab is CfA’s specialist software engineering team, developing digital services for the organisation and its human rights partners. Working with our distributed team of engineers, designers, and product managers, you’ll build and scale civic technology, digital democracy solutions, and AI-powered tools that directly empower citizens and make tangible social impact across Africa.
You’ll help shape the technical direction of key products including:
Responsibilities: Your daily responsibilities will include:
- Own the architecture, implementation and operation of multi‑tenant web and data platforms, including REST and GraphQL APIs, event streams and real‑time dashboards.
- Drive DevOps practices: CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing and observability
- Lead the technical roadmap for integrating LLMs, retrieval‑augmented generation and agent frameworks into CfA products and platforms.
- Mentor and unblock a distributed team of engineers through code reviews, pair programming and design workshops.
- Establish engineering standards, including data governance and responsible AI guidelines.
- Lead open‑source contributions: review community pull requests and upstream improvements across our public repositories.
What We Offer:
- A competitive salary, subject to experience, with opportunities for performance-based growth, both in terms of career path and public stature.
- Medical insurance cover, underwritten by a remote-first provider to ensure cover wherever you are
- 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.
What to expect during hiring
- 60‑minute culture and technical screen.
- A take-home code assignment, designed to take approximately 120 minutes of focused work, which you can complete at your convenience within a 72-hour window.
- 60‑minute assignment review, values and leadership interview.
How to apply:
Complete this form using this link and attach your CV, GitHub handle, and a brief cover letter (optional). Applications close on June 30, 2025 and will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
Please note: Due to high volumes of applications, we are unable to respond to each one individually. If you are selected for an interview, we will contact you.
To learn more about Code For Africa, visit their website
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