Summary
Date Posted: Thursday, May 05, 2022 , Base Salary: Not Disclosed

JOB DETAILS:
Position: Technical Manager – Digital Economy Practice
Department: Programs
Employment Type: 3-year Contract, Renewable
Reports to: Lead – Digital Economy Practice

ABOUT THE INNOVATION VILLAGE
The Innovation Village is Uganda’s launchpad for leading innovators and entrepreneurs. We are building an entire ecosystem of entrepreneurs and innovators in what is growing to become a business solutions provider for our biggest challenges or opportunities. From helping entrepreneurs launch and grow high-impact ventures to attracting regional and global opportunities, our ecosystem approach converges multiple partners including public, private, academia, research, and civil society as one force for good.

ABOUT THE DIGITAL ECONOMY PROGRAM
In partnership with the Mastercard Foundation and Mastercard Inc, The Innovation Village is launching the Digital Economy Program to transform the digital economy in Uganda. Digital transformation is rapidly re-shaping our global economy, permeating every sector and aspect of daily life – changing the way we learn, work, trade, socialize, and access public and private services and information. With this trend in technology, a new digital economy is emerging as a critical enabler for accelerating opportunities for young people, women, and small businesses. We strongly believe that the digital economy can play a significant role in boosting job creation in Uganda in the next decade by enabling growth, innovation, efficiency, and expansion of Uganda’s markets into new frontiers and creating the new future of work for young people.
As an organization, we have invested in building an ecosystem for innovators and entrepreneurs to launch and scale their ventures. To ensure they are at the forefront of the current global digital transformation we are deepening our work in the sector by ensuring we have the right team and resources to support entrepreneurs. Our work will involve ensuring Ugandan entrepreneurs and the ecosystem have access to digital infrastructure, tools, and technical support to enable effective participation in the digital economy to transform and drive growth in all sectors.

WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
Reporting to the Lead – Digital Economy Practice, the Technical Manager will be responsible and accountable for leading the technical components of the Digital Economy Program. The Technical Manager is the first point of contact across stakeholders in the program including the early stage, growth stage, intermediaries and technology providers like Mastercard Inc, and other technology service providers that will be onboarded under the Digital Economy program. The Technical Manager will understand the vast technology infrastructure needs and requirements of the different entrepreneurs and align those with the technology infrastructure partners from time to time.
You’ll have a strong technical background to identify and solve problems whilst supporting and driving engineers and designers to execute the roadmap in line with the program. The successful candidate should have the ability to effectively communicate across the business to both technical and non-technical stakeholders about changes to the product and the rationale for the prioritisation. Additionally, the Technical Manager will provide communication to the company and to customers with product demos, presentations, and changelogs to clearly explain developments within the product.

KEY RESULT AREAS:
Technical Leadership and Strategy
• Liaise with the Programs Lead to develop and drive the overall program technology strategy and design.
• Create and maintain strong technical acumen of the platform and inter-workings to support front line representatives the tech community building on the infrastructure.
• Evaluate, respond, and resolve complex inbound technical escalations / inquiries from the community.
• Identify process and procedural enhancements; recommend and implement changes to ensure best developer experience.
• Serve as the overall contact person for the day-to-day tech operations of the Digital Economy Program, both internally at The Innovation Village, and across the ecosystem.
• Ability to pick up new technologies independently
• Exceptional ability to analyse problems and to propose innovative but workable solutions
• Interpersonal skills necessary to effectively communicate over the phone and via email with a variety of individuals at all technical levels are required.
• Excellent verbal and written skills
Tech Community Management
• Build a community of tech entrepreneurs at various stages of growth serving their infrastructure needs in liaison with technology partners including Mastercard Inc
• Support growth and development of a selection of growth stage companies into viable commercial partnership with our technology partners namely Mastercard Inc
• Analyse support issue trends and work with relevant stakeholders and various departments on mitigation
• Working in close partnership with Mastercard, Inc to understand in-depth their “digital rails” offerings
• Building the technical understanding to develop solutions utilizing those rails
• Leading a team of engineers to build many such solutions
• Training and enabling technology partners to build and integrate their own solutions into and onto the digital rails
• Helping to mobilize the local development community and provide them with the requisite skills, trainings, and certifications to build digitization solutions
Technical Stakeholder Management and Engagement.
• Work with technology infrastructure partners to align scope of work, needs for the ecosystem in line with the program.
• Understand partners’ technical business objectives/impact and for timely resolution of issues and to ensure program success.
Program Technology Operations
• Oversee the technology Program implementation, by planning, monitoring, and analysing key metrics for the day-to-day performance of the program operations to ensure efficient and timely completion of tasks and other contractual obligations.
• Promote excellence and quality in programming through people-centred, systems thinking, and evidence-based approaches to both design and implementation.
• Provide technical and problem-solving support, and lead issue management across the program portfolio.
• Manage technical relationships / agreements with external partners/ vendors across the program period.

ABOUT YOU
Experience
• A minimum of 5-years in a technology project leadership role involving design, implementation, and management of results
• Demonstrated experience managing and scaling technology platforms targeted at the base of pyramid segments e.g., Agriculture, Micro Retail, Humanitarian etc.
• Strong hands-on experience in Android app development
• Familiar with standard Android programming languages and tools such as Kotlin and Android Studio
• Comfortable communicating to large groups to explain how an underlying technology operates
• Effective mentor and leader of junior engineering team members
• Comfortable translating business aspirations to product requirements and to specific engineering tasks in agile manner
• Enjoys the code design and review process. Seeks out input for one’s own code.
• Provides valuable input and guidance to others during code reviews or pull requests
• Enjoys solving difficult technical problem.
• Record of testable, maintainable, and efficient code design.
• Effective in a training capacity teaching groups of engineers on technical concepts
• Experienced trouble-shooter, adept at root cause analysis and record of leaving code better and easier to maintain than when you found it.
• Can effectively communicate risks and design trade-offs with management who may have varying levels of technical background
• Enjoys working with potential customers and helping them understand what is possible

Successful applicants will have experience with many of the following tools, approaches, and technologies:
• Understanding of various software design principles (i.e. MVC, DRY, etc)
• Exposure to secure coding patterns (i.e. OWASP, etc)
• Data security approach awareness (i.e. PCI DSS Compliance)
• Mobile development platform and framework familiarity (i.e. Bootstrap, React, etc)
• Device communication method understanding (i.e. NFC, Bluetooth, etc)
• Extensive usage of CI/CD tooling (i.e. Jenkins, Confluence, JIRA, Rally, Sonar, etc)
• SDLC process understanding (i.e. Scrum, SAFe, Extreme Programming, Lean etc.)

Academic Qualifications
• Bachelor of Engineering or Technology in Computer Science, Engineering or IT Bachelor’s
• (Minimum qualification)
• Master’s Degree in Business Management or Information Technology (added advantage)
• Certification in Project Management is an added advantage (added advantage)

Core Competencies
• Stakeholder Management.
• Ownership and initiative
• Innovation and agility
• Drive for results
• Thinking and problem analysis
• Resilience and resourcefulness
• Communication and influencing

Work Hours: 8

Experience in Months: 60

Level of Education: Bachelor Degree

Job application procedure
Use the link below to apply.
https://innovationvillage.co.ug/job/technical-manager-digital-economy-practice/
Submit your application by 16th May 2022

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