Most of the world's poor are farmers, representing the largest and most uniform group of poor people in the world. One Acre Fund is a start-up NGO in Kenya, Rwanda, and Burundi that is innovating a new way of helping farm families to achieve their full potential. Instead of giving handouts, One Acre invests in farmers to generate a permanent gain in farm income. We provide farmers with a "market bundle" that includes education, finance, seed and fertilizer, and market access. Our program is proven impactful – every year, we weigh thousands of harvests and measure more than 100% average gain in farm income per acre. We have laser-like focus on generating better lives for the people that we serve.
We are growing quickly. In five years, we have grown to serve 65,000 farm families with more than 500 full-time field staff. In three more years, we will at least quadruple in size, while adding several new countries. Our approach has won widespread validation, winning grants from the highly competitive Echoing Green and Skoll Foundations, and the global Financial Times/ IFC award for "basic needs financing" in 2010 and 2011. Website: www.oneacrefund.org
Job Description
One Acre Fund relies on several key home-grown software systems to help us manage a lot of information. As we grow our organization to 50,000 farm families, with 500+ staff, across 2 (soon to be more) countries, we need to continually improve the features of these software systems. We have three key systems in Microsoft Access – client roster, books, and payroll – that help us to manage a wide variety of operations. Our roster tool for example handles the enrollment of clients, taking farm supply orders from them, tracking hundreds of thousands of payments, creating a wide variety of business intelligence reports, etc. As we are growing, we are also looking to scale our existing tools to a distributed database in the form of occasionally connected applications (OCA) using SQL server, with runtime Access as a front end.
The Technical Associate will initially be based in Western Kenya, with an opportunity to relocate to Rwanda as Technology Lead in the Rwandan country office. They will:
- Africa-facing mission-critical databases: Lead the continued development of mission-critical, custom databases that touch every aspect of operations. Assist with streamlining the databases between the Rwandan and Kenyan offices, and facilitate communication about IT issues between both countries.
- IT:Manage one Kenyan IT staff for routine computer maintenance and purchase, with potential for growth in number of staff managed. Assist Kenyan IT staff with Network Management using MS Server 2008 and Forefront Threat Management Server.
- Technology experimentation: Experiment with a variety of technologies (e.g. Frontline SMS, mobile phone reporting) to improve operations. Investigate appropriate solutions for database scaling.
- Mentor Kenyan staff: Work closely with the Kenyan Database Programmer and assist with their professional development.
- Other: There is lots of "Other" in a startup
Qualifications
A successful candidate will have these traits:
- Good programming skills
- Knowledge of database concepts and SQL, experience with SQL server a plus
- Very strong self-manager, very well-organized. After an initial six-month period of heavy mentorship, supervision will consist of 1 weekly check-in. We need someone who is very well-organized and can manage their work independently
- Top-performing undergraduate background (include GPA and test scores on your resume)
- Work experience, or internship, in some professional environment - ideally 2+ years of work experience
- Willingness to commit to the position for at least 2 years, with ideally some experience living in a developing country
- Mentorship ability: this post will likely involve training and mentorship of local staff
- No ego or drama. We are looking for others that combine strong leadership skills with a humble approach to service. Our expatriate team lives in rural Kenya together in a group of houses, and so we are looking for emotionally stable and happy people
- Cooking skills, high propensity to laugh and be happy: always desired!
Preferred Start Date: As soon as possible
Compensation: Entry-level nonprofit position
Benefits: Modest health cover, 2 annual home flights provided – home trips include some speaking and fundraising duties
Career Development: Quarterly management consulting-style career reviews, and significant investment in career development. This post reports to the Technology Lead, who will spend significant time in your career development, and assist top performers with future placements in either the private sector or in the developing world.
To apply:
Email cover letter and resume to Itjobs@oneacrefund.org (Subject line: "Technical Associate" + name of the site that referred you)
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