Technical Project Manager at Ona

Job Description

This position will be based in Nairobi, Kenya and will report to the CEO.

Purpose: To develop and implement mobile, facility and enterprise technology solutions that support the real time exchange of information from a local to national scale. This includes creating child vaccine systems, integrating electronic medical record systems, exchanging vital health information and supporting the coordination of national health programs.

Key Responsibilities:

• Work everyday with the engineering team leads, project managers and designers to develop the right technical solutions across multiple platforms to meet the implementation needs.
• Support the day-to-day technical project management needs of the engineering team, making decisive decisions, responding to requests within one business day and asking for help when needed.
• Write software specifications, manage project execution, review UI/UX wireframes and mockups, and define product roll-out strategy, including writing product development timelines.
• Convert high level project goals to ticket level tasks with a detail that can be executed by our engineering team.
• Judiciously document and communicate project activities, plans and decisions, ensuring team members at different levels know their role and are supported to execute their assignment.
• Work with clients/partners to define the problem they are trying to address and design an appropriate technology solution. This often involves travel to the partner site.
• Lead the processes of project scope definition, objectives and functional requirements, including writing project proposals and budgets, while involving all relevant stakeholders and ensuring technical feasibility.
• Ensure that all projects are delivered on-time, within scope and within budget at the highest attainable quality standards.
• Identify project and technical risks early, raise them with our team and work together on mitigation strategies.
• Actively engage with team members offering to assist if your skills can contribute to the project.
• Develop and maintain industry leading technical understanding to translate program requirements into technical requirements, communicate and work closely with our engineers.
• Communicate project progress in a timely manner to Ona’s senior management team and project stakeholders.
• Attend stakeholder meetings, workshops, and conferences and present Ona’s products and work to diverse audiences (health, technical, etc).
• Analyse user feedback and ensure the technical solution continuously improves and optimizes client satisfaction.

Capabilities:

• Self-starter who is motivated to move the team and project ahead without direct instruction.
• Able to take big, sometimes nebulous, projects and tasks and break them down into granular details that can be accomplished by the engineering team.
• Able to prioritize dozens of high value tasks across multiple projects simultaneously, in an environment where priorities are constantly changing. Able to stay organized and deliver in this environment.
• Ability to communicate accurately, clearly, and effectively in written and spoken English.

Key Requirements

Essential

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field, e.g. computer science, IT, economics, social science, engineering, etc.
• At least 4 years of experience on a software development team, including 2+ years ideally leading technology solutions development teams.
• Experience configuring and implementing widely-adopted, open source data and information platforms (e.g. OpenSRP, Ona.io, ODK, OpenMRS, DHIS2, RapidPro and OpenHIE).
• Comfortable working in Linux environments, running web servers, testing Android APKs and triaging problems.
• Able to read and understand the logic and flow of software written in Java (server and Android), JavaScript and Python.
• Proficient in SQL.
• Knowledge and experience working with agile methodologies.
• Willing to travel globally (potentially up to 20-30% of time).
• Knowledge of project management tools a plus (e.g. GitHub projects, Harvest, Trello, JIRA).

Desirable

• Background as an engineering team lead, manager or ability to demonstrate competency at that this level.
• Experience implementing one of the abovementioned technologies in a large scale project.
• Strong interpersonal skills with the proven ability to lead multidisciplinary teams.
• Interest and deep familiarity with ICT4D.
• Technical experience in docker and document data storage solutions (CouchDB, Cassandra, MongoDB, DRUID or Hadoop).
• Ability to speak French or other languages
• Master’s degree in a relevant field such as Computer Science, Public Health, Engineering, etc.