Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a part-time Mid/Senior Software Developer – Python, Data, Scraping to work with our main civic technology lab team in Nairobi, Kenya.
The African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist startups. ANCIR members investigate organised crime cabals, crooked politicians and corrupt governments and predatory businesses.
A major part of these investigations, as demonstrated in the Panama Papers and similar transnational investigations, is driven by forensic analysis of scraped data from multiple sources. ANCIR is about to help five Kenyan newsrooms establish in-house forensic research desks, that will use advanced data analysis tools.
The successful candidate recruited through this advert will work with a multidisciplinary team of investigative journalists and technologists to build the core tools and datasets to power the first flagship investigations at the Kenyan newsrooms.
ANCIR is incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology federation, Code for Africa (CfA), with support from the International Center for Journalists. Our team of software developers is distributed across East Africa with labs in Dar es Salaam, Kampala and Nairobi. Our secretariat, with our admin, finance, and investment teams are in Cape Town, in South Africa.
Our Tech Stack
- Flask and Ruby on Rails backend
- ReactJS front end
- Python scrapers
- AWS
If you’re a strong engineer but haven’t used these technologies, we may still interview you!
About the Role
As an engineer focused on Python, data, and scraping, you will be responsible for the life-blood of the initiative. Our product pulls in data from structured APIs or from unstructured sources with our python scrapers. We then manipulate, organize, and display it in never before seen ways to our customers. We take data integrity seriously because that’s why our clients love us.
You will help to improve our data flow, build our data pipeline, write new scrapers, maintain existing ones, and improve the architecture our various data import tools. You will apply best practices and write smart+scalable code. You will be working with data nobody has ever worked with before.
Other Facts
- Remote work
- Part-time with the possibility of making full-time
- NOT an agency or outsourcing company
Desired Qualifications
- Strong technical background
- Comfortable with automated software testing frameworks
- A desire to work with primarily Python and occasionally other languages
- Can take a task from gathering requirements to deployment and maintenance
- Able to communicate effectively in writing and orally in English
- Eager to learn new things and apply them quickly
- Ability to learn from more senior team members and guide more junior team members constructively
- Willing to work part-time with some overlap on Kenya business hours (9 am to 6 pm EAT)
Engineering Culture
- Smart team: Work amongst other strong developers that you can learn from
- Remote work: Work from home wherever you live in the world
- New Technology: We stay up-to-date on new technology and readily employ it in new projects
- New Data: Work with new data sources that no one else has worked with
- Mentorship: We believe strongly in levelling up our team members through mentorship and will help you learn and become better as an engineer
- Move Fast: Our team builds really fast and launches new projects all the time. It’s a fun environment to work in where you’ll never be bored
- Friendly Team: Our team members take the team commitment seriously and will go out of their way to help you accomplish your tasks
- Challenging & Interesting Tasks: We have a lot of complex tasks that are a lot of fun to solve
How to Apply:
Fill out this form here: https://goo.gl/forms/vfIsS8vMVjTmA7di2 by 10 November 2018. If you need anything else, e-mail us at careers@codeforafrica.org (Do not apply through e-mail!)
About The Federation:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest federation of data journalism and civic technology laboratories, with labs in four countries and affiliates in a further six countries. CfA manages the $1m/year innovateAFRICA.fund and $500,000/year impactAFRICA.fund, as well as key digital democracy resources such as the openAFRICA.net data portal and the GotToVote.cc election toolkit. CfA’s labs also incubate a series of trendsetting initiatives, including the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative in East Africa, the continental africanDRONEnetwork, and the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) that spearheaded Panama Papers probes across the continent. CfA is an initiative of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).
At CfA, we don’t just accept difference – we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products, and our community. CfA is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
To all recruitment agencies: CfA does not accept agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, CfA employees or any other company location. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.