Vice President of Engineering Job in Kenya


Vice President of Engineering

Location: Nairobi - Kenya
Reports to: President

About Bridge International

Bridge International Academies was conceived in 2007 out of the belief that giving every child access to a high quality education would have the greatest impact on reducing poverty worldwide.  

With that guiding insight, Bridge International developed a strategy that would enable it to launch a large-scale network of high-quality, ultra low-cost, for-profit primary schools.  

Operating a network of schools supported by a strong central headquarters gives Bridge International the scale, experience, and capacity to invest in systems of management, support, training, and innovation that allows individual schools to dramatically increase their effectiveness.  

Using this model, Bridge International is able to profitably deliver high-quality education for $4 per child per month.  This ensures that its academies will continue to successfully serve its communities as long as parents value the educational service provided.  

The first Bridge International Academy launched successfully in Kenya in 2009 and over 70 academies are operating in Kenya today.  Through rapid and strategic expansion, Bridge International will provide a quality education to over a million students in the coming years.

We have and are continuing to develop one of the most sophisticated operational approaches to providing affordable education to MILLIONS of children in one of the most challenging environments in the world!  

Our success relies on our “School in a Box”, a sophisticated set of custom developed systems, tools and processes (think McDonalds or Starbucks) that are used by all Academy Managers, as well as by support teams at headquarters to audit, monitor and support all of our academies.  

While the end-user technology at the academy is limited to paper and a smartphone, all of our systems and processes are underpinned by a sophisticated set of supporting and enabling technologies that allows schools to operate cost effectively and efficiently, with oversight by headquarters.

About this position

The Vice President of Engineering will be responsible for managing the software development, product management, data reporting, IT support and IT infrastructure teams and projects at the company.  

We currently have two in house scrum teams developing both mobile applications for use in the field and web applications for use at headquarters.  

We also have a product design team responsible for business analysis and UX design, a data team responsible for reporting infrastructure and responsive reporting, and an IT infrastructure and services responsible for the network and IT helpdesk.  

In addition to managing these teams we expect the VP of Engineering to recruit and train at least two more scrum teams to increase our capacity to build software as well to expand our use of outsourcing.  

The VP Engineering will also be responsible for recruiting a software architect who will ensure that our systems are built on a solid foundation that can scale to support our rapid expansion.

Key Responsibilities
  • Manage the development and maintenance of all IT systems across the company from conception through deployment.  Manage software project schedules and report progress and risks to the executive team.  Demonstrate ownership and accountability for the entire product delivery process.
  • Supervise multiple agile multidisciplinary software teams responsible for software development, product design and quality assurance
  • Recruit and train additional in-house software teams and identify and develop relationships with external software development resources
  • Allocate resources appropriately across various projects, juggling immediate needs with longer term company goals
  • Set the technical direction for the software development organization, drive the evolution of the systems architecture, and make appropriate technology choices.  Evaluate and introduce new and emerging technologies and techniques to the team as appropriate
  • Work with team leads and senior team members to improve software development and project management practices within the team including the continued adoption of agile methods
  • Implement processes and metrics to monitor and ensure that the software engineering organization is efficient and able to meet goals and deadlines
  • Work with departments throughout the company to understand their business processes and requirements and find creative IT solutions to their problems
  • Work directly with the executive team to develop, prioritize and manage the corporate technology roadmap
  • Work closely with IT the infrastructure and support team to develop plans for application deployment, user training, user support and SLAs for IT systems
  • Foster a culture of creativity, collaboration, speed, innovation, excellence and a fun work environment while continuously elevating the quality and caliber of the software development organization
  • Contribute to overall IT strategy of the company
Specialist knowledge required
  • Knowledge and experience of software project management best practices, including agile methodologies, and the ability to put them into practice in software organizations
  • Knowledge of the full software development lifecycle including release management, deployment and post-deployment support
  • Knowledge and experience of taking business processes and implementing them in software including requirements gathering, workflow design, and UI design
  • Ability to lead and mentor software professionals
  • Strong technical understanding of the development of mobile applications, web services and web applications
About you
  • 15 years of experience in software development with at least 8 years in a management role
  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related technical field (MBA preferred)
  • Demonstrated experience managing multiple simultaneous projects and multiple project teams across multiple geographic locations
  • Solid track record of leading the development of multiple technically complex, scalable and robust mission critical software systems through the entire software life cycle
  • Experience developing enterprise web and mobile applications
  • Experience developing ERP systems for companies with locations in multiple countries
  • Planning and organizational skills
  • Leadership skills
  • Analytical skills
  • Writing and oral communication skills
  • People management skills
  • Ability to be adaptable and flexible
In order to be considered for this position all candidates must register and upload their CV’s on our website atwww.bridgeinternationalacademies.com

Only short listed candidates will be contacted