Mid Level Software Engineer (NodeJS, React Native & MongoDB)

Anticipated start: 1 September 2023

Location:  Remote (South Africa, Kenya, Ghana)

Team: Product Team

Instill’s mission is to transform teaching, learning and leadership in every classroom on the African continent. We believe that the greatest levers for change in the education system are teachers and school leaders. We have recently been accredited as a higher education institution in South Africa, and have launched Upskill, a mobile-first learning platform to support teachers in their ongoing professional development. Following an MVP built externally we are now building our own engineering team. We’re looking for an experienced Mid Level Engineer  to join our small and growing team to ensure the success of our online learning platform. Reporting to our CTO, this will be a great opportunity to help shape the future of our engineering team and technology platform.

What makes you a great candidate?

You are an experienced (5+ years) software engineer who is ambitious, eager to learn and has a passion for education. You enjoy working in a fast-paced business environment and grow with a young organisation that seeks to change the face of education across the African continent. You enjoy working on both the frontend and backend; developing cloud hosted applications with NodeJS, React Native and MongoDB. You are well-organised and you bring experience building software products.

When evaluating your candidacy, beyond your engineering skills we will look for the following:

• Demonstrated commitment to anti-racism, equity, and inclusion
• You are a critical thinker with strong interpersonal communication skills
• You have a demonstrated passion for educational development, closing educational equity gaps, and are strongly aligned with our vision, mission and values

What does role entail?

You will be working as part of the development team on our mobile learning platform and administration portal.  The job  includes:

• Developing, maintaining and operating our platform
• Implementing new features in close cooperation with our product team
• Ensuring high code and architectural quality and making improvements where appropriate.
• Ensuring a high level of test coverage.
• Responsibility and accountability for a scalable and maintainable technology platform.
• Providing technical and feasibility estimates for the product development process.
• Managing the sprint backlog together with the product owner.
• Caring about the platform quality end-2-end, from first lines of code to running it in the cloud.

Required Skills & Experience:

• Good working knowledge of at least 2 programming languages.
• 4+ years of commercial experience writing server-side JavaScript (NodeJS / serverless)
• 3+ years of experience with a Tier 1 cloud environment (AWS, GCP or Azure)
• 4+ years of experience with React  frontend development.
• 2+ years of experience working with MongoDB and good knowledge of Mongo design pitfalls
• Experience of working with product owners / product managers in an agile environment
• Experience working in a SCRUM as well as a KANBAN process.

Selection Criteria:

• You are organised, and reliable
• You put our end users first and can make recommendations that improve our users’ experience
• You have a track record in managing your time effectively to complete work on time and according to standards
• You are detail oriented and have a high level of quality
• Ability to communicate effectively
• You take initiative and are proactive in your engagements, raising risks early
• You are comfortable working in a high speed environment and are flexible and can adapt quickly to change
• You can work effectively in a multicultural and geographically dispersed team
• Familiarity with Content Authoring or LMS tools is useful
• You have  an ability and desire to learn and master new software tools easily

Do our values resonate with yours?

We measure the impact of everything we do. We believe that education equity is a central pillar of achieving social justice. We pursue excellence in everything that we do. We have the courage to make bold decisions and learn from our mistakes. We build community by being accountable for our actions, fostering collaborative environments, and acting with integrity and humility. We believe that diversity is central to our success.