Platform Engineering Lead at African Leadership University (ALU)

We are seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to lead the design, optimisation and governance of ALU’s digital infrastructure. This is a hands-on technical leadership role; you will play a central role in shaping the architecture, development practices and delivery models. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in a builder environment, sets high technical standards and wants to leave a lasting mark on how a mission-driven institution runs its technology.

ROLE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead the software architecture and software development across ALU’s platforms (Salesforce, AWS, Oracle NetSuite and others).
• Remains an active technical contributor through hands-on coding, architecture design and perform code reviews to ensure technical excellence and scalability..
• Design scalable, modular system architectures, including microservices-based approaches where appropriate.
• Establish and manage stable environments for development, QA and production; ensuring reliable deployment pipelines and traceability.
• Optimize and secure API and cloud infrastructure, implementing robust monitoring, observability, and documentation standards.
• Reduce technical debt by establishing consistent build pipelines, version control practices and enforcing unit & regression testing before production releases.
• Collaborate across vendors and internal teams to standardize code quality, enforce DevOps practices (CI/CD, automated testing, environment parity), and align technical workflows.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to product teams; setting the bar for quality and security.
• Ensure technology choices balance scale, flexibility and cost-efficiency.

Ensure the safety and well-being of all young persons and vulnerable adults with whom we deal,  by adhering to ALU’s comprehensive safeguarding policy, maintaining a zero-tolerance approach to any violations of safeguarding standards.

REQUIREMENTS

• 9+ years of experience in platform engineering, DevOps or full-stack software development
• Salesforce and AWS certifications preferred (or equivalent demonstrated expertise)
• Proven experience as the technical lead or principal engineer in environments where you set standards and guided teams
• Hands-on experience in API design, CI/CD pipelines and cloud infrastructure management, with version control and collaboration using Git and Jira.
• Strong experience with AWS, Oracle NetSuite, or similar enterprise platforms
• Proficient in setting up and managing secure, scalable development environments and automation pipelines
• Strong grasp of software architecture, including monolith-to-microservice transitions
• Experience working with external vendors and ensuring delivery quality across multiple partners
• Full-stack development experience a plus