Android App Developer

About Us

CGA Technologies is an international consultancy firm, registered in the UK, with associated companies in South Sudan, Kenya, Sierra Leone, and Malawi; and also staff based in Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

Since 2011, we have worked to deliver national-scale, sustainable change in the fragile and/or poor countries where we operate; we specialise in doing that by increasing participation and achievement in education, through at-scale cash support to citizens, and by leveraging each to make the other more effective.

In projects in challenging contexts, our consultants provide or support strategy development, policy design and guidance, information systems and bespoke technology, and on-ground implementation and operationalisation. Our work allows funds and assurance to flow sustainably. We enhance basic service sectors to play their role in the fight against extreme poverty, in particular through effective use of data systems.

We applied this work in South Sudan where we created the South Sudan School Attendance Monitoring System (sssams.org), which supported an increase of enrolment of school children from 0.9m to 2.7m between 2013 and 2021. This system monitors pupil and teacher attendance, and allows payment and salary incentives to flow to them and their schools. In Sierra Leone, we designed and developed the Human Resources for Health in Sierra Leone system (hrhsl.org), which ensures health worker attendance and delivery of services.

In October 2019, Charlie Goldsmith Associates (CGA) became part of the Corus International multi-sector family, led by Lutheran World Relief-IMA World Health, and we later rebranded as CGA Technologies.

Approach to technology

• We have a coding team of nine, based in the UK and across Africa
• We have an extensive library of tools and code, enabling us to respond rapidly and cost-effectively to client and context requirements
• We specialise in bandwidth-frugal solutions for complex contexts: user-friendly data management platforms and websites; lightweight Android apps with extensive offline/online capability; and synchronisation that prioritises to make the best use of available bandwidth. In such contexts, we also link our systems to existing ones to ensure the right data is collected and used
• Clients receive full access to the source code with no restrictions over future reuse/modification, with no seat licences, and code is made fully open source where possible/relevant.
• We are signatories to the Principles for Digital Development.

Other examples of our work include: https://sleams.org; https://mtukula.com/; https://rtdm.education.gov.mw/menu/

Person Specification

We are looking for an experienced Android developer to serve as a core member of our in-house Technology Team, either working remotely from home or working within one of our country offices. Additional experience/capability in web development will be highly beneficial but not required.

Core responsibilities

These include applying your high level of expertise and technical skills alongside our project implementation teams and fellow tech team members to design, develop and support the rollout of systems to clients and populations. These typically involve cloud-based MIS with associated context-appropriate Android applications.

Essential requirements

• Strong experience in Android app development, ideally both in Kotlin and Java, on data-centric applications with local database (e.g. data collection/management tools, synchronisation features, reporting/charting, etc)
• Must be up to date with modern Android development practices, including use of Android Jetpack library, Room ORM livedata, SQLite and other tools
• Strong UI/UX skills to deliver a smooth user experience
• Good coding practices (writing clean, logical and well-documented code)
• Experience using git (version control) as part of a team
• Good English skills, verbal and written
• Strong communication skills: ability to articulate ideas clearly and to maintain timely communications with team members to keep others informed of progress and expectations
• Ability to conduct tasks independently when necessary, including having initiative to identify key tasks, improvements, and problems with the software that others may not have thought of yet
• The desire to help improve the lives of others, particularly the poorest and most marginalised.

Desirable qualifications

The following are not required but will be valued highly in potential applicants:

• Experience with app deployment on Google Play Store
• Experience building Android apps with offline functionality and subsequent online synchronisation
• Sufficient experience and confidence to be able to lead the creation of a new Android app from scratch, potentially leading other developers
• Experience in Web application development using PHP, Javascript, MySQL, CSS, and using frameworks such as Laravel, Bootstrap, JQuery
• Experience of implementing DevOps best-practice such as automated releases
• Cybersecurity/ GDPR/ Safeguarding awareness
• Availability to travel to some fragile/ remote areas
• Understanding of the international development sector, government structures and/or basic service delivery (e.g. health, education, social protection)
• French/other language.