Senior Back End Engineer at Nova Pioneer

ABOUT THE ROLE

As the founding Back-End Engineer, you’ll build the core services and data infrastructure powering our AI Success Coach, learner profiles, and post-school pathways. You’ll define patterns, ship reliable APIs, and set technical foundations that can scale across Africa.

Key Output: Robust services and data infrastructure that enable fast releases, protect user data, and measurably improve activation, completion, and progression outcomes.

Key responsibilities of the role include:

Build Core Services and APIs

• Design and implement REST or GraphQL APIs in TypeScript (NestJS or Express).
• Model relational data in PostgreSQL; manage migrations safely and document schema changes.
• Develop background jobs and event-driven workflows for notifications, reports, and AI interactions.
• Collaborate closely with front-end engineers to design efficient, well-documented API contracts.

Design for Scale, Performance, and Low Connectivity

• Apply caching, pagination, and query optimization to support learners in variable network conditions.
• Implement resilient patterns: retries, idempotency keys, and circuit breakers for stability.
• Introduce lightweight observability (logs, metrics, error tracking) suitable for early-stage growth.

Build with Security, Privacy, and Safeguarding in Mind

• Implement authentication and authorization (OAuth 2.0 / OpenID Connect, RBAC).
• Embed privacy-by-design principles, secure data handling, and clear retention policies.
• Ensure youth safeguarding and consent patterns are integrated into all data flows.

Support the AI Success Coach and Analytics

• Build secure endpoints and data stores for AI interactions with appropriate guardrails.
• Redact or tokenize sensitive information in logs and analytics.
• Define event schemas and data pipelines for user engagement and learning insights.

Lead Engineering Quality and Collaboration

• Write automated tests (unit, integration, end-to-end) and maintain CI checks.
• Participate in design reviews, document architectural decisions, and mentor peers.
• Contribute to infrastructure as code, CI/CD automation, and deployment pipelines in cloud environments.

ABOUT YOU

• 5+ years professional experience (or equivalent) shipping production apps/services; 2+ years in a senior/lead capacity.
• Demonstrated technical leadership: led a complex project from design → rollout, influenced cross-team decisions, and mentored engineers.
• Experience in startup or early-stage environments, shipping MVPs to production
• Strong TypeScript and Node.js skills with frameworks such as NestJS or Express.
• Database expertise with PostgreSQL including indexing, query optimization, and migrations.
• Experience with GraphQL or REST, API versioning, and client side caching strategies.
• Message queues and background processing using tools such as RabbitMQ, SQS, or BullMQ.
• Designing systems for low-bandwidth and intermittent connectivity
• Cloud experience on AWS, GCP, or Azure including container registry, managed Postgres, and object storage.
• Strategy and impact. Translate goals into a technical plan with clear trade offs and phased delivery.
• Communication. Write crisp design docs and ADRs and align non technical partners.
• You move quickly but thoughtfully, balancing experimentation with quality.
• You care deeply about building infrastructure that improves education outcomes.
• You are an excellent written and verbal communicator, able to simplify complex ideas, inspire action, and represent Nova Pioneer externally.
• You have strong project management skills. You are able to juggle multiple tasks and meet deadlines and targets.
• You understand best practices for youth safeguarding, data privacy, and responsible AI, ensuring ethical implementation of programmes and technology.
• You are a problem solver - you are proactive in identifying issues and address these thoroughly by making an effort to find appropriate solutions.
• You thrive in start-up or early-stage environments; able to pivot quickly, manage risk, and deliver under tight timelines.
• You have a heart and belief in the African continent and are keen to shape young minds of innovators and leaders.
• You resonate deeply with our mission and culture principles in developing the next generation of innovators and leaders.