Bridge International Academies is the world's largest education innovation company serving the 800 million children who live on less than $2 USD per day. We strive to provide the highest quality education product to the more than 100,000 students who attend Bridge’s more than nursery and primary schools across emerging markets in Africa and (soon to open) in Asia. We are data-driven and technology-enabled. Using smartphones and tablets, our “closed loop” Learning Lab enables us to monitor teacher and student performance in real time, constantly reviewing and revising to ensure that we are offering a world class education that will prepare our students for the 21st century. Outside of the classroom, we work with governments and civil society organizations to create customized teacher training modules, English Language Learning curricula, and “pop up” schools for refugees and other vulnerable populations.
Technology at Bridge
Technology plays a critical role at Bridge in enabling us to provide education at massive scale and low cost – it's one of the key elements that gives us the ability to deliver what no one else can. Tech spans several key functions, from the hardware and software that our academies use to run all aspects of teaching and management, including mobile payments, to the systems that enable our country headquarters to manage massive local operations, to the data backbone that informs all of our strategic and tactical decision making.
About the Role
We are looking for a full time Software Engineer to join our new London-based cross-functional software development team, which will build the software that powers and improves our competitive advantage. The London team will have a special focus on the parts of the system that are more customer facing, experimental, and strategically important.
This person will join an elite team of top tier developers, led by a Microsoft MVP and overseen by a hands-on CTO passionate about delivering high-quality products – we will be building the technology that will take Bridge to the next level. It's a great opportunity to grow and learn, while working on developing software with a mission that few, if any, can compete with. We believe in innovation, continuous delivery, and high impact.
How We Work
Above all else, we’re looking for ambition, organisation, drive, intellect, problem solving, and respect for others. You will be part of the London high-speed team, which emphasises collaboration across all aspects of delivery. We don't have architects or managers – we have people passionate about getting their hands dirty and delivering the hotness.
What You Will Do:
- Participate in all aspects of software delivery, from inception to development to delivery and support.
- Analyse and improve server-side architecture with a focus on maintainability and scalability.
- Collaborate with team and project stakeholders to elaborate requirements and facilitate trade-offs that maximise customer value.
- Contribute to innovation stream that explores new technologies and approaches applicable to Bridge.
What You Should Have
- Experience with commercial, enterprise-grade .NET and/or .NET Core software development.
- Experience with writing ASP.NET or ASP.NET Core based API's or websites.
- Degree in BA/BS in Computer Science or related technical field.
- Familiarity with test-driven development (TDD) and/or behaviour driven development (BDD).
- Experience with the following are highly valued:
- Continuous delivery practices and tools (e.g Jenkins, Bamboo, GoCD, Octopus).
- Cloud environments and architectures, such as AWS or Azure.
- Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g. Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Docker, boxstarter, chocolatey).
- MS SQL Server/T-SQL
- Agile delivery environment
- Bridge also values developers with diverse experience, so exposure to other languages and ecosystems (e.g. NodeJS, Ruby, functional languages, NoSQL DBs) is a bonus.
- Bridge is a strong supporter of open source projects – familiarity with OSS projects is a plus; contributions to open source projects is a big plus.
- We particularly value experience in extreme growth situations.
- Passionate about Bridge’s vision of democratizing the right for all children to succeed
You’re also
- A dedicated technologist– You love coding. Figuring out how to solve a problem with an elegant solution is exciting to you. You read blogs, attend user groups, and probably even work on personal side projects. You don't know what's impossible because you haven't seen it yet.
- A detailed doer – You have a track record of getting things done. You’re organized and responsive. You take ownership of every idea you touch and execute it to a fine level of detail, setting targets, engaging others, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done.
- A creative problem-solver – Growing any business from scratch comes with massive and constant challenges. On top of that, Bridge works in volatile, low-resource communities and runs on fees averaging just $6 a month per pupil. You need to be flexible and ready to get everything done effectively, quickly, and affordably with the materials at hand. Every dollar you spend is a dollar our customers, who live on less than $2 a day, will have to pay for.
- A customer advocate – Our customers – these families living on less than $2 a day per person – never leave your mind. You know them, get them, have shared a meal with them (or would be happy to in the future). You would never shrink back from shaking a parent’s hand or picking up a crying child, no matter what the person was wearing or looked like. Every decision you make considers their customer benefit, experience, and value.
- A life-long learner – You believe you can always do better. You welcome constructive criticism and provide it freely to others. You know you only get better tomorrow when others point out where you’ve missed things or failed today