Do you want to help run digital infrastructures and tools that strengthen our democracies and empower citizens?
Code for Africa (CfA) has an immediate vacancy for a Site Reliability / DevOps Engineer to join our civic technology lab.
Candidates must have demonstrable experience in building tools to automate and streamline deployment processes, as well as in maintaining and troubleshooting production systems running on at least one Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider.
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.
Required: minimum requirements include:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent Engineering discipline
- 2+ years as Site Reliability/DevOps Engineer working with AWS.
- 1+ years development experience in Python, JavaScript, Go, or related languages.
- Strong Linux troubleshooting knowledge.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
Preferred: candidates who are able to demonstrate the following will have an advantage:
- Good to advanced knowledge of TCP/IP networking & troubleshooting tools.
- Experience with Docker, Nginx, Dokku, GitHub Actions, or similar technologies.
- Ability to dive deep into complex technical problems
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.
About the Role:
The successful candidate will join CfA’s Technology team as a Site Reliability / DevOps Engineer.
The technology team is responsible for designing, developing, deploying and maintaining all digital services (tools/systems/platforms) at CfA.
You will be responsible for keeping all customer-facing services and other production systems running smoothly. This will include protecting the health of the production environment by, for example, planning and testing disaster recovery scenarios for our highly available tools/systems/platforms.
Additionally, you will support the development team with an agile, responsive continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform to deliver high-quality builds with measurable performance and quality.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design, write and deliver software to improve all aspects of our deployment process i.e. infrastructure-as-code
- Debug production issues across all our services.
- Analyse data and provide operational insights into service reliability and user experience to Design and Development teams.
- Plan the growth of Code for Africa’s infrastructure.
- Writing technical documents.
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.
How to apply:
Please fill in this form by 30 April 2022
About Us:
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of indigenous African civic technology and investigative data journalism laboratories, with over 70 staff in 19 countries, who build digital democracy solutions that are intended to give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthen civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.
This includes building infrastructure such as the continent’s largest open data portal, open.AFRICA, and largest open source civic software portal, commons.AFRICA, as well as the largest repository of investigative document-based evidence, source.AFRICA, as well as incubating initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network that gives citizens their own ‘eyes in the sky’, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative in 12 African countries, and the sensors.AFRICA remote-sensing citizen science initiative to combat air/water pollution.
CfA also incubates the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), as an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional mainstream media to smaller specialist units. ANCIR member newsrooms investigate crooked politicians, organised crime and big business. The iLAB is ANCIR’s in-house digital forensic unit, with teams in east, south and west Africa. ANCIR uses its resources to strengthen newsrooms’ own internal capacity, by providing access to the world’s best whistleblower encryption and investigative semantic analysis technologies, as well as skills development, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
At CfA, we don’t just accept differences – 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. 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 employment application line, CfA employees or any other CfA contact. CfA is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.