Systems Developer at Development Pathways

Reporting to: Head of MIS unit
Location: Based in the Development Pathways’ office in Nairobi, Kenya, with international travel of up to 3 months per year. Please note due to the current COVID situation, staff are currently remote working and not travelling.
Starting Salary: Commensurate with experience plus benefits

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced Systems Developer to join our Management Information Systems team based in Nairobi. We are at the cutting edge of building management information systems for public services across Africa and Asia.

 You will be joining us at an exciting time as we look to expand and strengthen our MIS team. The position will also require leadership and management skills as the successful candidate is likely to manage a range of IT projects and teams.

This position will be based in Kenya and will contribute to the development of the Pathways MIS framework, building on lessons from social policy management information systems implementations in the last 10 years. This framework will standardise development tools, develop components and ensure that future developers adopt a similar platform. A majority of the work will be delivered from the Development Pathways’ Nairobi office and will involve international travel, once the current COVID crisis subsides.

Purpose

To play an important role in the growth of Development Pathways by working with Senior Management information System Specialists and other system developers to: strengthen our reputation as leading specialists in building cutting edge software solutions for social protection, social and economic development and broader social policy; research on the latest trends on software development, building new and enhancing existing social policy management information systems and providing technical advice to projects.

Responsibilities

The Systems Developer will be responsible for the following duties:

1. Working with other software developers, design a common and standard development framework to be used by Development Pathways, building on successful frameworks and learning lessons from existing MIS projects;
2. Mentor other software developers in the Company, by building on their technical skills in the  area of software development;
3. Research on the latest technological frameworks for software development and develop appropriate and cost effective plans for migrating legacy MISs, built by Development Pathways;
4. Provide consultancy inputs on assignments contracted by Development Pathways: some will require overseas travel while others will be desk based;
5. Play a support role in the technical implementation of contracts for social policy management information system assignments. This will include timely and high quality delivery of inputs, and contributing to project outputs (e.g. production of management information software solutions, technical documentation, etc.);
6. Lead in the development of social policy management information system projects built on Visual Studio (C#) programming language and SQL Server databases or PHP and MYSQL;
7. Enhance social policy management information system projects that have been developed and implemented by Development Pathways, based on established standard service level agreements. This will entail reviewing the source code and building an understanding of the business process of the programmes.
8. Regularly maintain an effective database backup system (for MIS Source code) for all Development Pathways’ Social Policy management information system projects using appropriate tools;
9. Troubleshoot all technical issues related to the social policy management information system project implementations, including through provision of technical support to users at different levels and locations; and
10. Undertake Quality assurance testing of the software systems that are developed by Development Pathways.

Person Specification

The Systems Developer must have the following qualifications, skills and competencies:

Essential

• A degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Science or related degree;
• A minimum of 5 and maximum of 10 years of demonstrated professional work experience, programming in a busy software development environment;
• A sound knowledge of relational database management systems – especially SQL Server -, project implementation life cycle and using mature software development technologies;
• Good C# and .Net  core 2.2 – 3.1 and/or PHP (Laravel version 7) skills;
• Understanding fundamental design principles behind scalable software application;
• Basic understanding of Common Language Runtime (CLR), its limitations, weaknesses, and workarounds;
• Strong documentation skills especially system documentation;
• Proficient understanding of code versioning tools {such as Git, SVN, and Mercurial};
• In-depth understanding of development frameworks and design patterns such as MV6, Bootstraps, MVC, MVVM, dependency injection and inversion control, repository pattern, bootstrap CSS, Signal R, High charts, Angular JS; and
• Experience with transact SQL Server programmability including stored procedures, functions and triggers; and
• Fluent in English.

Desirable

• Experience with national level social protection programmes; and
• Proficiency in another language, e.g. French, Portuguese, and/or Spanish.

Equality Statement

Equality and diversity is at the core of Development Pathways’ values. In the selection of our staff, we are committed to gender balance and diversity without distinction as to race, sex or religion, and are inclusive of persons with disabilities: well qualified candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.

Our staff are expected to work collectively and individually to promote a constructive and sensitive approach to others from a variety of backgrounds, where the work of others is valued and respected.

Terms of Employment and Benefits

Salary will be assessed during the selection process, to reflect level of experience and qualification. This is a permanent and-full time position.

The successful candidate would receive an attractive package of the following:

• Entry into the company pension scheme;
• Entry into the company bonus scheme;
• Flexible working hours;
• 26 days holidays in a year (excluding public/bank holidays);
• Company laptop;
• Group life assurance;
• Access into the company private health insurance scheme.