Chief of Engineering

Chief Of Engineering Role Summary

• Location: Anywhere in Africa, Europe, India (time zones GMT-2 to +4)
• Reports to: Chairman
• Works closely with: CEO & CTO
• Team: 8 internal dev staff + global open-source contributor community

The Chief of Engineering (COE) is the senior engineering leader responsible for delivering RESPECT’s platform features, releases, and technical roadmap, as defined in partnership with the CTO/(Chief Software Architect) and CEO)

• The CTO focuses on architecture, specifications, and standards.
• The COE focuses on development, delivery, and team excellence.
• The CEO focuses on platform evangelism, marketing, and fundraising.

About the Spix Foundation & RESPECT™

The Spix Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit accelerating the adoption of RESPECT™, Africa’s open-source, vendor-neutral Digital Public Infrastructure for Education (DPI-Ed). RESPECT enables Ministries of Education, developers, localizers, researchers, and telcos to collaborate on delivering free, high-quality interactive courseware to every African learner—online or offline. RESPECT makes it easy for EdTech Stakeholders to embrace the African Union's African EdTech 2030 Vision and Plan (https://is.gd/bOxih5).

RESPECT is fully open-source, built for interoperability, localization, data privacy, and scale.

Job Responsibilities:

• Coordinates with the global open-source community to build and improve upon what exists where possible and attract contributions for newly developed EdTech apps.
• Translates identified needs into high-quality, on-time, production-grade software.
• Owns delivery pipelines, software engineering discipline, and engineering productivity for the aforementioned team.
• Creates and administers the necessary (public) repositories on GitHub for the aforementioned apps.
• Creates and maintains a Google Play publishing account to publish apps. Ensures that apps published on Google Play meet required Google Play policies and addresses any rejections from Google Play.
• Oversees issue management and ensures that issues are triaged and addressed in a timely fashion.
• Conduct code reviews of all code written by the team
• Collaborate with open-source development communities through RESPECT and non-RESPECT channels including Slack, Discord, etc.
• Hire, coach, and retain “the best software platform development team in Africa.”
• This is a hands-on senior leadership role combining technical depth, managerial excellence, and community leadership.

Education and Experience (Required)

• 10+ years in professional software engineering, with 5+ in leadership roles.
• Experience leading, maintaining, and/or contributing to widely-used open-source projects.
• Demonstrated success leading teams delivering complex, distributed systems.
• Strong experience with: Android development, Kotlin Multiplatform, Open-source development workflows (GitHub, forks, PRs, governance)
• Excellent communication skills and ability to manage both internal teams and external contributors.

Preferred

• Experience with OpenAPI (formerly Swagger)
• Experience with user conditions common in low resource settings e.g. intermittent network access, low-memory devices, etc.
• Background in EdTech, Digital Public Infrastructures, telecom, and/or federated data systems.
• Knowledge of privacy-by-design, secure coding, and accessibility standards.

Personal Attributes

• Mission-driven and aligned with Africa’s EdTech 2030 Vision & Plan.
• Calm, pragmatic, and grounded—able to balance velocity with stability.
• Collaborative; able to work with technical and non-technical team members alike.
• Builder’s mindset: shipping reliable code matters more than PowerPoints.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and fast-moving multi-stakeholder environments.
• Passion for open-source communities and engineering excellence.

How to apply:

If you meet the above job requirements, we would like to connect with you. To apply, please submit your updated CV with a short cover letter explaining why you are a good fit to recruit@platinumadvisory.co.ke within the deadline

Safeguarding, Inclusivity and Equality: All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment without regard to ethnicity, gender, race, color, religion, national origin, age, disability, marital status, or any other characteristic that has no bearing on the ability to perform the required job duties.

Data Protection: By submitting your application, you confirm that the submitted information is true and authorize Natural Justice to use your personal data, to further process your engagement for lawful purposes related to the organization’s vision, including conducting background checks.

Only shortlisted candidates who qualify for the next recruitment stage will be contacted.

Disclaimer: Please note that we do not charge a fee at any stage of this recruitment process.