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Overview
The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) is a global alliance formed to enable the digital ecosystem to deliver greater scale, efficiency, and social impact as it creates more inclusive digital economies in emerging markets. Working with partners, DIAL generates evidence of what works through a series of demonstration projects, distils insights and tools to promote scale-up and replication, and provides mechanisms for knowledge sharing, collaboration, and co-investment throughout the ecosystem.
DIAL is a donor-funded program hosted within the UN Foundation and based in the UN Foundation’s Washington, D.C. office. The Software Engineer will be an employee of the UN Foundation.
About the ICT4SDGs
Software platforms have yet to reach ubiquitous scale in the sector, and commercial software providers have not appreciably adjusted their product design to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Digital investments in global development are most often siloed by programmatic sector and working within constricted timelines, resulting in fragmentation and duplication of effort, de-prioritization of reuse, increased overall cost, and a limited the number of Information Communications Technology (ICT) applications that have built sufficient momentum to develop into broadly reusable software platforms. These ICT investments don’t address the end-to-end needs of government programs, leaving governments to determine how to integrate multiple, often fragmented technologies.
The SDG Digital Investment Framework (a product of the ICT4SDGs program) helps policymakers identify reusable ICT building blocks (e.g., ID, messaging and payment services) that can deliver priority SDG use cases. A key tenet of the framework is that there are recurring business processes across the SDGs that common ICT services can support, and multiple sectors can invest in and share. By prioritizing use cases according to citizens’ needs, we can map functionality across sectors and then invest in comprehensive infrastructure comprised of reusable software components, called ICT building blocks.
About the Open Source Center
The mission of the DIAL Open Source Center (OSC) is to convene a vibrant and inclusive community for builders of free and open source software, promoting knowledge sharing, collaboration and co-investment in technology and human capacity to support positive social change in communities around the world. It believes that an ecosystem with mature open source products, co-funded and contributed to by multiple organizations, is the key to delivering open and sustainable digital products and services that honor the Principles for Digital Development and addressing the SDGs through reusable building blocks.
Where appropriate, these two programs at DIAL are uniquely positioned to provide direct technical support to open source products to effect ecosystem-level changes, particularly in situations where a small, focused team can provide catalytic change, and where the goals may not align directly with the product vision of any one (siloed) product and community. Therefore, DIAL is seeking a Software Engineer. This software engineer would provide technology specialist services (architecture, implementation, testing and documentation, e.g.) primarily to serve the needs of the OSC and ICT4SDGs work.
Working Relationships
The Software Engineer will report to the Director of Technology for overall guidance, work planning and performance reviews. He/She will work closely and may also be supervised by DIAL’s Director of Community for the Open Source Center.
Responsibilities
The Software Engineer will have the following main responsibilities:
ICT4SDGs Catalytic Gap Filling
Perform Software Engineering tasks following an Agile/scrum methodology, as prioritized by the Director of Technology and the Technical Business Analyst, to improve public good software products identified as candidate building blocks for the ICT4SDGs goals.
Open Source Center Support
Provide in-kind support for architectural consultation, software implementation, documentation and testing, as requested by grant applicants.
Provide direct support to Open Source Center programs, such as website maintenance, grant application submission processes, and any other software needs.
General DIAL Support
On an as-needed basis, support other programmatic work at DIAL by offering architectural consultation, due diligence, software implementation, documentation and testing.
Selection Criteria
Minimum 8 years’ relevant professional experience, with engagements across the public, private and nonprofit sectors preferred.
Demonstrated excellence for design and implementation of enterprise-level software products.
Relevant experience contributing to and participating in open source projects and communities, including software development, testing, documentation, issue triage, mentorship, and governance tasks.
Experience with several prominent programming languages such as Java, C#, Ruby and Python.
Experience working with web application frameworks such as Spring MVC, Rails and Django; and web stack tools such as Apache, Tomcat, nginx, and PostgreSQL.
Experience working with configuration, orchestration and provisioning tools, such as Docker, Kubernetes and Puppet.
Experience working with software revision control workflows, git preferred.
Experience with popular tools in the T4D ecosystem such as ODK, RapidPro and CommCare preferred.
Experience working with Agile/scrum methodology.
Master’s degree or higher in computer science, computer engineering or math, or equivalent academic or professional experience.
Benefits & Compensation
For full-time, benefit eligible employees, UNF offers an excellent range of benefits, including:
A choice of two health plans through CareFirst (PPO or HDHP with HSA),
dental insurance,
Vision discounts,
flexible spending accounts,
403b retirement savings plan with a generous matching contribution,
group term and supplemental life insurance,
short-term disability,
long-term disability,
health club discounts,
commuter benefits, and
employee assistance program.
Additionally, all benefit eligible employees have 12 paid holidays, 20 vacation days, 10 sick days, 3 personal days, and 8 weeks of parental leave.