Software Engineer

Software Engineer

Reports to: Software Engineering Manager.

Location: Nairobi – Kenya

Living Goods endeavours to improve access to essential healthcare services in underserved regions, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. We empower Community Health Workers (CHWs) with digital tools that enable them to deliver door-to-door care. CHWs use a mobile app to track pregnancies, diagnose and treat common infectious diseases like malaria and pneumonia, monitor disease outbreaks, and follow up with families. Real-time data also supports performance monitoring and impact assessment. By integrating tech-based solutions into community health systems, Living Goods fosters better health outcomes, demonstrating the power of digital health in transforming healthcare delivery in resource-constrained settings.

The Kenyan government recently initiated the scale-up of digital tools intended for the facilitation of Community Health Services in all 47 counties. The Ministry of Health is creating a unified national electronic health information system(eCHIS) to improve community health service delivery and supply chain, reporting and performance management for better health outcomes at level one.

As a partner, Living Goods supports the government in the development and implementation of a robust eCHIS, and is working within a coalition of MOH-coordinated stakeholders to support government in leveraging the eCHIS to drive strong performance management, revolutionize service delivery and ultimately improve health outcomes. Considering this, Living Goods plans to embed technical experts at MOH to support the implementation of eCHIS.

The Opportunity:

Living Goods is seeking an experienced Software Engineer to join our Global Software Engineering (GSE) team on a secondment basis working closely with MOH. The position involves working on digital health software development projects in collaboration with MOH to address critical needs and enhance eCHIS. As a Software Engineer, embedded at MOH, you will be responsible for designing, developing, testing, and rolling out software solutions for users such as Community Health Promoters (CHPs) and Supervisors to enhance the program’s impact on the ground and help save more lives through a more responsive community health system.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain robust and scalable applications for the digital community health sector
• Work closely with MOH and County representatives to understand eCHIS requirements, goals and constraints
• Participate in meetings and discussions to align software development efforts with MOH initiatives on eCHIS rollout
• Design, develop and implement reliable, scalable, efficient, and secure software systems that are built on Community Health Toolkit (CHT)
• Identify, prioritize and execute tasks in the software development life cycle.
• Support Kenya’s MOH and County end users on any arising technology issues/bugs working alongside the tech support team to resolve or escalate to other tech teams and follow up to resolution.
• Work with QA Engineers to Perform validation and verification testing.
• Work with MOH product managers to translate complex requirements into software solutions.
• Contribute to Design, Development and Maintenance of features of eCHIS, including new feature development, review and fixing bugs, code review and scalability testing.
• Report in daily Scrums on Milestones, progress towards tasks, barriers needing attention, etc. Log all development activities inside a task management System.
• Automate tasks through appropriate tools and scripting.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, IT, Software Engineering, or a related field
• Proficiency in programming languages such as JavaScript, Python, or related technologies
• 5+ years of professional experience in software development, using command-line tools on Linux (preferred) or another UNIX-like operating system. Be comfortable and proficient in HTML, JavaScript, Node.js, and JSON.
• Have a minimum of 5 years of Hands-on experience in designing, developing, and implementing fit-for-purpose digital solutions for scale operations and programs, preferably in the digital health space.
• Experience with front-end and back-end development, UI/UX design, and integration techniques, including API integration for smooth communication and data exchange, and database integration for efficient data storage and retrieval.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work collaboratively in a cross-functional team. Use of project management tools such as JIRA, Confluence will be strongly preferred
• Familiarity with version control systems such as GIT.
• Hands-on experience working with open-source platforms and tools such as Digital Global Goods (CHT, CommCare, OpenSRP, OpenMRS, OpenLMIS, DHIS2, etc.) will be strongly preferred.

Skills and Competencies:

• Strong software design, development, and implementation understanding.
• Hands-on experience in designing, building, and testing web and mobile applications including familiarity with concepts of MVC, ORM and RESTful APIs.
• Ability to effectively work in a UNIX-like environment as well as with asynchronous JavaScript in the browser and in Node.
• ·Ability to work with front-end JS frameworks, such as AngularJS, and ReactJS, even better if you are already having expertise with one of them.
• Good knowledge of database systems including SQL and NoSQL databases.
• Good knowledge of cloud hosting environments such as AWS.
• Ability to work through ambiguity and deal with shifting priorities.
• Effective written and verbal communication with the ability to engage various levels of technical and non-technical stakeholders for communicating, brainstorming, designing, and rollout out digital health solutions and interventions.
• Strong customer service orientation that establishes a good working relationship with customers, with the attitude of wanting to assist people and pass on their knowledge and experience to others.

Compensation

A competitive salary and benefits package commensurate with experience including health insurance and bonus opportunity. The opportunity to be your best while making lives better for those in need.

Living Goods is an equal opportunity employer and will consider every qualified applicant for employment. Living Goods does not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

Our current job openings are displayed on our website, where you can search for open positions and apply directly. Living Goods does not offer any positions without an interview and never asks candidates for money. If you are asked for money, we strongly recommend that you do not respond and do not send money or personal information.