Software Engineering Manager

About Dimagi

Dimagi is a social enterprise and Benefit Corporation that builds software solutions and provides technology consulting services to improve the quality of essential services for underserved populations. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dimagi partners alongside governments, leading NGOs, and foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, and the World Bank to tackle complex health and social inequities. Our open-source technology platform, CommCare, is the world’s most widely-used and researched mobile data collection platform for frontline workers. To date, Dimagi’s team of project managers, engineers, and health experts have supported over 2,000 projects in 80 countries.

About the Position

To support our work, Dimagi is seeking an ambitious candidate with a technical and project management background. This position will be based out of our office in Cape Town, South Africa.

As the Engineering Manager you will: 

• Manage a team of engineers and technical staff to enable their potential and help shape the growth of the team, while also ensuring timely execution of team deliverables and helping to guide their resourcing
• Use project management skills to own the execution of technical workstreams, including proactively ensuring understanding of technical requirements and timelines, management of technical efforts, and proactive communication of status updates and information gaps 
• Work with our Product Manager, Applications Engineers, Solutions Architects and Engineers to help understand the priority of technical asks and drive the engineering roadmap
• Communicate with our project delivery team to promote understanding of technical capabilities and limitations, timelines, and what expectations to set externally.
• Coordinate with engineers and requirements owners to manage and be accountable for technical project deliverables
• Manage project resourcing requests and facilitate communication with delivery teams
• Lead management of our third party development partners

Due to the nature of our offerings, the work will be challenging, but in the right ways - you'll have an opportunity to quickly dive into and learn from multiple project areas, all while making a real, positive impact. We are looking for both leaders and teachers who are charting the strategic direction of a team and who make time for project management guidance, training, and mentoring to improve the team’s effectiveness.

Relevant Experience

At the core of this position, we are looking for smart, capable, and impact-driven individuals. For that reason, please consider the following requirements listed as general “guidelines” vs. strict qualifications: 

• 5+ years of experience working on and guiding software teams
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Direct people management experience, as well as demonstrated experience overseeing multi-person technical projects
• Project management experience
• Planning and organizational skills that result in successful implementation and follow-through

Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Able to drive technical strategic conversations with a range of stakeholders.
• Ability to manage the priority of workstreams with multiple stakeholders and timelines.
• Demonstrated initiative and comfort with unstructured problems in a diverse environment
• Self-motivated team player, with proven capabilities to lead a project independently
• Ability to work with all levels of an organization and manage conflicts in a constructive and solution-oriented manner
• Strong, innovative and creative problem solver with good analytical capability
• Ability to multi-task and manage multiple project tracks and workstreams
• Excellent time management and efficient working practices
• Quick learner, collaborative, and client-oriented
• Able to quickly adopt the use of Dimagi systems and tools e.g. Jira, Asana, Confluence 
• Experience facilitating and managing engineering teams using sprint / agile / scrum methodologies
• Fluent in oral and written English

Bonus Skills:

• Product management or software development experience 
• Familiarity with some components of our tech stack (Python, Django, SQL, Javascript/jQuery, HTML5/CSS, Knockout, CouchDB, Postgres)
• Enthusiasm about working in international development and/or technology for social impact

Benefits Provided:

We aim to make a difference, not just as a company, but as an employer as well.  The benefits we offer are geared towards having a strong impact on our staff’s well being. A few of our key benefits are outlined below:

• 100% employer-sponsored medical insurance 
• 5% match to Employees’ Retirement Fund 
• Stock Option Plan
• 30 days paid time off inclusive of holidays
• Unlimited sick time and excellent parental leave policy
• Access to a flex-time policy that allows employees to work based on a flexible work schedule
• Access to an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) through Magellan Healthcare
• Occasional opportunities to travel internationally
  
  

Dimagi is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate and support diversity and all employment decisions are based on individual qualifications.