Senior Software Engineer at Strathmore University

Basic job summary:

The Senior Software Engineer will be responsible for designing, building, and operationalizing software infrastructure. This role will lead the full-stack development and system integration of backend services, APIs, and data pipelines.

Responsibilities:

Software Development and Design

• Collaborate with the project technical lead and other team members to analyze requirements and design software solutions for AI applications.
• Develop, test, and debug software components for data exchange gateways, and cloud platforms.
• Assist in implementing data management, analytics, and visualization features for AI applications.
• Implement engineering frameworks that enable LLM-based advisory systems, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), structured knowledge integration, and prompt orchestration.
• Integrate soil, weather, and agronomic datasets into retrieval and reasoning pipelines to support contextualized and actionable advisory outputs.
• Support experimentation with different GenAI architectures and system configurations in collaboration with data science teams.
• Develop or support frontend and interface components (e.g. dashboards, admin tools, sandbox interfaces) required for internal testing, monitoring, and partner integration.
• Implement technical controls to support data governance requirements, including consent-aware data access, role-based permissions, and audit logging.
• Participate in code reviews and maintain coding standards and best practices.

.Quality Assurance and Testing

• Debug Identify and address any software-related issues, anomalies, or performance bottlenecks.
• Collaborate with the Quality Assurance team to ensure a high-quality optimized code solution.
• Ensure the security and integrity of AI software systems, implementing encryption, authentication, and access control mechanisms as necessary.
• Perform code reviews, testing, and debugging activities to maintain high quality and reliability in software deliverables.
• Ensure secure handling of sensitive or regulated data in line with Kenya’s Data
• Protection Act and project governance frameworks.
• Embed responsible AI considerations into system design, including safeguards, escalation pathways, and human-in-the-loop mechanisms where required.

Documentation and Reporting

• Create and maintain comprehensive repository documentation for software designs, iterations, specifications, and testing procedures.
• Develop standard operating procedures (SOPs) for software MVP development and testing.
• Generate simulation and evaluation software code report before final release version for deployment

Collaboration and Support

• Collaborate with research, data science and engineering teams to meet project timelines and deliverables.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior software developers, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous learning

Minimum Academic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Data Science, or a closely related technical field from a recognized institution

Experience:

• Applicants should possess a minimum of 7 years’ experience in software development