Technical Program Manager at Ona

Purpose

We are looking for a delivery focused Technical Program Manager. This position will be based in Nairobi, Kenya and will report to the Health Technical Lead (Principal TPM).

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 programmes.

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 program management needs of the engineering team, making decisive decisions, promptly responding to requests 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 technical 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 interacting with RESTful APIs
• 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).

Desirable

• Background as an engineering team lead, manager or ability to demonstrate competency at that level.
• Experience configuring and implementing widely-adopted, open source data and information platforms in a large scale project(e.g. OpenSRP, Ona.io, ODK, OpenMRS, DHIS2, RapidPro and OpenHIE).
• Strong interpersonal skills with the proven ability to lead multidisciplinary teams.
• Knowledge of project management tools (e.g. GitHub projects, Avaza, Trello, JIRA).
• Interest and deep familiarity with ICT4D.
• Ability to speak French or any other language.