Who we are

Role overview

• You are a strong work ethic - you have a willingness jump through hoops to deliver results.
• You are a clear communicator comfortable explaining complex technical and mathematical concepts to any team member including team members outside of your department.
• You are ambitious and understand the demands of building for emerging markets.
• You care about changing the way education is made accessible online.

About You

• 1+ years of experience as a Software Engineer
• Ability to solve problems using clean, reusable, maintainable code.
• Experience building production applications using Object Oriented Programming (Java or PHP or Python)
• Can implement and maintain automated testing of backend applications (Java or PHP or Python)
• Some experience with continuous integration and continuous deployment
• Experience with Flask or Django or Laravel or Spring or Ruby on Rails
• Git and Github
• Are comfortable working in a written communication-first remote company (we write everything down and don’t do stand-ups/meetings)
• Happy writing documentation so that others can ramp up super easily and you're never a single-source-of-failure.

Responsibilities

• Maintain and improve API applications using Python, PHP and TypeScript
• Maintain and improve internal packages using Python, PHP and TypeScript
• Setup and maintain CI and CD workflows

Benefits

• Salary Range: $ 900 - $ 2 100 (USD) per month — open to negotiation if you have more experience
• NB: We are legally obliged to pay you in your local currency — you cannot be paid in USD unless if USD is legal tender in your country. You will be employed by a local legal entity in your country and paid in the legal currency in your country.

See local Rates for countries we are actively looking to hire from for this role:

1. South Africa: R 15 000 - R 35 000 monthly
2. Nigeria: ₦ 375 000 - ₦ 880 000 monthly
3. Ghana: ₵ 8 850 - ₵ 20 600 monthly

• MacBook Pro as work laptop
• 15 days paid leave each year (in addition to official Local Public holidays)
• Flexible remote work policy
• An opportunity to do exciting, fulfilling work with great teammates

Why you might be excited about us

1. We're working to solve a massive global problem and equalise access to online tools so students in developing countries can study better. There are +345 million students in the developing world who need FoondaMate.
2. We're small, so you'll be able to contribute efficiently and without bureaucracy. You'll quickly have responsibility over big areas of our product.
3. We don't have a lot of meetings. As in, most days, engineers have zero. We believe in slow thought, and if we can effectively solve a problem asynchronously, we do. When we do meet synchronously, you'll always have the opportunity to contribute.
4. We don’t measure input. We only measure output. You will never be asked to record your time or send in your timesheets. Instead, you will be asked to push your work in progress code everyday to Github, and keep your drafts on Notion for research/documentation work so your progress/productivity can be monitored.
5. We utilise and maintain a Career Progression Framework that enables our team at Foondamate to track and record their personal career progress through regular check-ins against the skills required for their role, with their managers. We’re seeking to empower our team to grow, and demonstrate clearly where they are vs current expectations and the next step too - so we can support them in making that step.
6. We are transparent about salary across the entire organisation. As in, you will know what salary bands your team members are in. We’re not about offering a low salary to someone based on their current salary or expectations. Additionally, our team know how much they can expect to earn now and later, once they’ve got that well-deserved promotion.
7. You'll be able to work remotely.
8. We will mould your role to shape a career you're excited about. We care a lot about your satisfaction and job happiness, and will help prep you for whatever you're looking for in the future.
9. We work hard and also highly value balanced work/life. We care about family and your own personal development.

Why you might not be excited about us

1. Everything under “Why you might be excited about us” above.
2. We're small (~10 people in the company now), so if you like more established companies, it's not (yet) the right time. You'll help build our company's culture.
3. Since we're an early stage startup, projects and priorities may shift.
4. We’re a fast-paced company
5. Our users love us, and there's a lot we can improve. It's a great place to be, but means there's some junk. (Nothing too scary! 😃)
6. Since you'll have a lot of responsibility and creativity over projects, they may not be defined perfectly initially, you'll be expected to bring your own experience and perspective to help us do the right things - and raise flags if you think we should do things differently.

What we are currently struggling with

• Building in emerging markets where mobile data is a big issue and most phones are entry level. Need to build for entry level smart phones by default.
• Building in overlooked markets where people do not engage with their immediate environment in English but are forced to engage with technology in English, our applications engage with users in multiple languages (managing quality of output of internationalisation efforts at scale is a challenge).
• Aggregating tons of poorly managed data that we need to vet and restructure.
• Finding innovative ways to solve Maths equations using coding.

How to apply

1. Some posts about us around the web (TechCrunch, News24, TechCabal)
2. Our Instagram to learn more about the space we're working in, where we post about our products and education.