Data Engineering Fellow Job Description

Title: Data Engineering Fellow

Location: Kenya 

State date: As soon as available

Application Deadline: May 15th, 2023

Organizational Background 

Founded by a group of committed Kenyans, Lwala builds the capacity of rural communities to advance their own comprehensive well-being. We support communities to design, implement, and evaluate solutions to their most pressing health challenges. Then, we build coalitions of communities, health workers, government, and universities to generate evidence of impact and infuse these insights into the formal health system in Kenya and beyond. This bottom-up change promises holistic solutions that are custom-built for the systems they are meant to reform.

Overview

Lwala is pursuing a growing portfolio of innovative community-based health interventions backed by robust data systems to generate organizational learning and evidence as we scale. Lwala’s extensive data system is heavily based on innovative digital health tools and platforms that generate high-quality data for decision making and concurrently act as job aids for front line health workers, reaching 125,000 clients.  

The Data Engineering Fellow is responsible for the advancement of the technical software systems at LCA that relate to digital health and support of program teams. This includes data collection applications, data pipelines, analysis and reporting dashboards. The position holder will maintain various existing database and digital data/information systems, including Salesforce, OpenFN, Commcare and other internal applications in support of Lwala’s Community Health digitization efforts. The position will also be responsible to review, implement, and manage quality of new systems or additional components of existing systems. The position may also support data and technology systems beyond Lwala’s community health data as needed. 

Lwala is entering into a new partnership with Migori County MOH as they digitize over 2500 Community Health Workers via the eCHIS (Kenya’s electronic Community Health Information System) and link to Kenya’s new DHP (Digital Health Platform). You will also work to help adapt eCHIS to work with Lwala’s existing systems in ensuring that the data pipelines are automated and efficient for enabling data driven decision making. 

You’ll especially impress us if you have worked in building data pipelines and automating data flows in the public health sector in low-resource settings. This position reports to Lwala’s Director of Digital Systems based in Nairobi.

Key Responsibilities

The Data Engineering Fellow will strengthen Lwala Community Alliance ability to holistically serve and improve the well-being of all customers through the support of technology solutions. 

• Build and maintain integration of all data sources such as Commcare, Salesforce, eCHIS and other reporting systems. 
• Provide and implement best practices for successful data management across the Digital Systems teams and other relevant teams as required 
• Support the implementation of Open Source software(eCHIS), participate in communities and engage with other partners in software development
• Manage, maintain and operate Lwala Community Alliance’s data pipelines, dashboards and reporting systems through setup and management of the data pipelines and ETL jobs as required
• Support integration of data systems such as OpenFN and other dashboard and reporting systems such as PowerBI, Superset  from multiple data sources.
• Ensure scalability of existing systems to accommodate expansion to new program areas, including making forecasting recommendations for system upgrades and expansion
• Identify and address issues with system data quality in collaboration with Research and Learning , product management, field support, and program teams.

• Provide technical application and data analysis support across all systems including KenyaEMR, Commcare, PowerBI, Salesforce, OpenFN, eCHIS, and other applications as needed.
• Evaluate new reporting and dashboard applications for suitability to the processes as provided by other internal and external departments 
• Maintain versatility to work with other technologies and teams or partners as directed by the reporting line manager to tackle the needs of the organization

Qualifications & Experience 

(The knowledge, skills and abilities may be acquired through a combination of formal schooling, self-education, prior experience, or on-the-job training) 

• Level of Education

• Diploma or degree in computer science, statistics, data engineering, information technology or a related field.

1. Job experience:

• Experience working with Electronic Medical Records as a data engineer, software developer, database administrator, data system analyst or similar position, particularly in health informatics. 
• Experience working with community-based projects.
• Experience in working with Open Source software and tools 

1. Specialized Skills/Training/Professional Qualifications

• Working Experience with different types of Databases, OpenFN, Commcare, SalesForce is preferred
• Working knowledge of Open Source software solution
• Working with JSON format and XLS Forms, and integrating different databases
• Programming languages for enabling dashboard and reporting such as: Javascript or python, or any other relevant development language

Characteristics

• Strong communications skills.
• Ability to take initiative and be proactive
• Ability to understand community-based programs and how to link them to technology.
• Dedication to the mission of Lwala Community Alliance.
• Strong interpersonal skills 
• Attention to details and problem solving skills.
• Ability to learn new systems and software quickly.
• Creative thinking in problem solving

To Apply

Please send the following to recruitment@lwalacommunityalliance.org with the subject line “Data Engineering Fellow”. 

• Current CV/resume. 
• Letter of Interest detailing related skills and experience. 
• 3 professional references with name, title, email, phone contact, and relationship to the applicant.