Do you have experience designing robust, scalable data architectures? Are you proficient in designing, implementing and automating systems for data workflow management? Do you possess fluency in Python, SQL, with experience in another language like Java? Do you consider yourself to be a strong collaborator, with great communication skills? Are you a coach with a deep passion for developing and mentoring other data engineers?

Sounds like you, continue reading…

ABOUT US

In 2035, Africa will have the largest workforce in the world and will need to catalyse transformation by empowering its largest untapped resource - its people. Fuelled by this, the African Leadership Group is an ecosystem of institutions with a shared vision to harness Africa's abundant human capital and transform the continent and the world by selecting, developing, and connecting 2 million young leaders to opportunities by 2030. ALG was founded over 15 years ago by Fred Swaniker, a serial entrepreneur recognised by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019. ALX and The Room are two brands of the African Leadership Group.

ALX is our training arm, focused on developing skills for the fourth industrial revolution (software engineering, devops, data science, etc.) to ensure that Africa is able to compete effectively as the world undergoes a digital transformation. To cement this, through our legal entity  African Leadership International (ALI), we have signed an agreement to acquire Silicon Valley based Holberton Inc. – a project-based, college alternative educating the next generation of software engineers. This will give us ownership of the advanced technology program that will enable us to provide global organizations access to significant untapped pools of talent that can bridge the growing global shortage of technology talent. For more on this, please read this article here.

The Room our talent placement arm, is a community that our young talent join to access global work opportunities. To learn more about us, please read this article about why we launched The Room & this article about the impact of our development programs on African youth. View this pitch deck to see how we present ourselves to employers.

ABOUT THE DATA TEAM

Companies around the world are clamoring to find talent with skills in software engineering, data science, UX/UI design, software architecture, business intelligence, cyber security, cloud computing, Internet of Things, product management, and other skills that can enable the rapidly accelerating digital transformation. The Room is solving this challenge by creating a new supply of diverse, world-class technology talent and matching this talent to global companies that need it.

Our method is simple: (i) select the best emerging talent from the world’s largest pool of untapped talent: Africa (which will form 40% of the world’s population by the end of this century); (ii) rapidly train this talent to meet market demands and reduce the shortage of available technology talent and (iii) build a large-scale, B2B staffing business to outsource this talent to global companies.

This is where you come in - As a Senior Data Engineer, you will have a focus on building the data infrastructure for a best-in-class intelligence platform and be responsible for ensuring data availability, quality, and security.

ABOUT THE DATA TEAM cont.

You will be joining a team that has a fail fast, iterate often mentality. With a bold mission, we encourage autonomy, creativity, collaboration and experimentation. We seek those that have a beginners’ mindset, are lifelong learners, thrive in uncertain circumstances and uncharted territory, have a user-first mindset, finding joy in understanding the pain points of the customers and solving their problems data.

If you're excited about working in a hyper-growth, fun and collaborative environment, this is a chance for you to have an impact on young African talent.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As Senior Data Engineer, your responsibilities will include:

• Supporting the Head of Data in driving a “data first” mindset across the organization by developing scalable systems and processes for data collection, ingestion, transformation and consumption and helping hire a world-class team of data engineers
• Developing and deploying a robust, distributed, scalable, realtime, state-of-the-art platform that will act as the single source of truth for all data-related requirements of the organization including reporting, analytics, user intelligence, and decision support
• Developing and documenting detailed plans for the data platform to conform to allocated resources and define quantifiable outcomes for the near-term, interim and future state
• Mentoring young data engineers in your team and help them advance in their learning and career goals
• Developing standards for data processes and encourage data-driven approaches to problem-solving across the organization by communicating clearly about engineering capabilities and limitations, and collaborating productively with Engineering, Product, Marketing, and Business teams.

REQUIREMENTS:

• 10+ years of industry experience building data infrastructure

• Masters degree or higher in Computer Science

• Fluency in Python, SQL, with experience in another language like Java

• Proficiency in designing, implementing and automating systems for data workflow management

• Experience designing robust, scalable data architectures

• Proficiency in developing and publishing APIs using web services

• Proficiency in using distributed storage (e.g. S3), serverless architecture (e.g. Lambda), streaming data (e.g. Kafka), scalable search (e.g. Elasticsearch)

• Proficiency with containerization (e.g. Docker/Kubernetes), and other deployment tooling

• Proficiency with big data technologies like map-reduce, NoSQL, Spark, HBase, Hive

• Experience with data security protocols, data access controls, AWS/GCP/Azure security mechanisms at the data and access levels, database security, scripting attacks, API security

• A record of published patents and/or technical publications in peer-reviewed conferences and journals will be an added bonus

• Strong communication and collaboration skills to work with stakeholders from different backgrounds

We would like to remind you that this is a remote job, meaning you can work from anywhere in the world. However, we prefer a GMT to GMT +4 time zone.