Senior Software Engineer (backend) – IASO
at Bluesquare

Organization

Bluesquare is a fast growing technology company focusing on digital solutions and data analysis for Global Health and Development. Bluesquare’s goal is to help Global Health resources get where it matters the most. We partner with Global Health Funds, national governments, health service purchasers, and NGOs, to help them make smarter health investments. Bluesquare’s technologies are in use in more than 30 countries and support +60 different clients, including the World Bank, the WHO, the World Food Program, the Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, leading NGOs and consultancies.

Bluesquare’s headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, but we have offices in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and Burundi, as well as a network of consultants in Benin, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger and Zimbabwe.

For more information about who we are:https://bluesquarehub.com/

Mission

As we are growing our activity in Campaign Digitization (planification and implementation of health campaigns – vaccination, distribution of health-related items, etc.), patient-level monitoring, health facility registries and performance based financing, mainly in Africa, we are in need of additional help to lead the development of Iaso, our open source platform dedicated to these activities.

Description of the platform

Iaso is an open source platform for planning and monitoring data collection adapted to low connectivity environments. It was created to support geo-based data collection efforts, mainly for public health programmes in Lower and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) contexts.

It supports the management of a master list of health facilities and health zones/regions with geographical information, which are then used to structure planning, data collection, and completeness monitoring at each relevant level. Iaso mobile data collection tool can be used to update and enrich this hierarchy with additional GPS coordinates, name corrections, etc., which can then be validated by upper levels.

The tool has been used in multiple data collection efforts, notably in the domain of performance based financing of health services and improvement of national geographic data in education and health in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria. It serves today as well in large scale projects in partnership with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative and the World Food Programme.

Iaso is a mature and widely implemented software being constantly enriched by the real use cases of more than a dozen projects. It is also extensively used in connection with DHIS2, the widely used open source Health Management Information System in LMICs.

Iaso consists of a white labeled Android application using Java/Kotlin and reusing large parts of the ODK projects and a web platform programmed using Python/GeoDjango on top of PostGIS. Frontend is mainly React/Leaflet. One of the aims is the ease of integration with other platforms. We already have csv and geopackage imports and exports and target easy integration with OpenStreetMap.

Start date: as soon as possible.

Location: Brussels preferred.

Team: We are a horizontal company with more than 70 team members in multiple countries. We value ownership, autonomy, flexibility, communication and teamwork.

Roles & Responsibilities

Support the continued development of the platform, which includes the following tasks:

• Prioritizing and evaluating tasks with our product owner

• Developing the backend application of the platform and ensuring a consistent architecture.

• Review the work of other contributors to the platform, including junior developers

• Possibly contribute to the frontend development of the platform

• Possibly contribute to the development of the Android application (e.g. by reviewing and testing mobile app developments)

• Participate in presentations of the platform to external stakeholders (NGOs, Ministry of Health, Foundations)

Profile

This position is open to freelancers or employees.

Required: We are looking for an experienced candidate with strong technical skills.

• Mastery of Django/Django Rest Framework or similar frameworks (RoR, Laravel, etc.)

• Good knowledge of Python and its ecosystem

• Practical knowledge of Docker, Docker-Compose

• Knowledge of AWS, and in particular of Elastic Beanstalk, S3 and RDS

• Strong relational database knowledge, ideally with PostgreSQL and Postgis

• Knowledge of React/Redux (we build on top of Webpack/Babel currently)

• Decent mastery of Javascript

• Strong attention to code quality and maintainability

• Good oral and written communication skills in English and ideally French

Nice to have

• Knowledge of Android/Java/Kotlin to be able to contribute to the mobile app development

• Experience working with GIS tools (geographical tools)

• Confidence with design tools like Figma or Sketch

• Experience with mockup tools like Balsamiq/Whimsical

• Interest in the Global Health actors and in the field conditions where Iaso is being implemented (LMICs and low connectivity areas)

Soft skills

• Ability to work autonomously

• Team player with strong analytical and interpersonal skills

• Creative thinking skills

• Clear and structured communication

What we offer

• Competitive Salary and benefits package, as employee or freelance

• Flexible work hours and remote working

• Exciting projects: use data to solve major issues (Health, Education, Waste management and more)

• Impact : manage data platforms impacting the lives of thousands of people

• Network: work in collaboration with a wide variety of actors within countries (Ministries, Donors, NGOs, Implementing partners, field staff, etc.)

• Hands-on experience: on-site visits and in-depth situation analysis

• Exciting work environment: join a result-oriented, dynamic & diverse team committed to improve the accessibility and quality of health services, especially for the poorest

To apply, please send your CV and motivation letter to iaso-backend-engineer2@bluesquare1.odoo.com.

https://www.bluesquarehub.com/blog/vacancies/senior-software-engineer-2/