About Imagine Worldwide
All children have immense potential, but hundreds of millions don’t have access to the learning they need. Imagine Worldwide’s mission is to empower millions of children across Sub-Saharan Africa with the literacy and numeracy skills they need to reach their full potential. We provide a tablet-based, personalized learning solution designed for the most challenging environments. Nine Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) across multiple countries and settings have shown dramatic learning gains, increased school attendance, and gender parity, all for less than $7 per child per year.
Imagine Worldwide partners with governments, organizations, and communities to provide child-directed, tablet-based learning that is accessible, effective, and affordable. We are a California-based (United States) nonprofit organization operating across seven Sub-Saharan African countries. Learn more on our website.
About the Role
The IT Manager will play an instrumental role in carrying out Imagine’s mission, to design, deliver and scale tablet-based learning solutions that enable children to become literate and numerate. The successful candidate will play a key role in providing technical leadership, coordinating local Implementation Service Providers (ISPs) who will support the MBSSE at national, district, zone, and school levels to ensure effective and efficient monitoring and oversight of our programs. The candidate will join a highly committed and collaborative team that is working together to empower every child, everywhere to achieve their full potential.
Key Responsibilities
The IT Manager will work directly with the Director of Technical Services, Imagine Worldwide Technology and Supply Chain, to manage Imagine’s path to the national adoption of our edtech program, in Sierra Leone. The candidate will lead in the continuous monitoring and support of equipment deployed in schools, management of the technical teams within the ISPs.
Manage program equipment and IT assets in the field:
- Oversee asset management monitoring the equipment in the field, in terms of tracking to maximize visibility of equipment at school sites and optimize uptime and equipment performance;
- Develop and implement strategies to maximise the sound functioning and system uptime of all program equipment and infrastructure deployed in schools;
- Apply and improve the Imagine Playbook (program manuals, processes, templates, and workplans) for implementation of technology tools and data governance, customizing for local context as required to maximize time on task;
- Develop and evaluate technology performance metrics and facilitate adjustments;
- Document processes and ensuring compliance with industry standards;
- Conduct technical school monitoring and technical site inspections regularly, through ISPs and directly, to be able to adequately report on the program;
- Collaborate with Finance and Operations to coordinate reverse logistics required to enable repairs of program equipment.
Manage and provide technical support for ISPs
- Provide technical assistance and guidance to the technical leads of our Implementation Service Providers (ISPs), ensuring adherence to key programmatic objectives;
- Support partners in diagnosing and resolving technical issues including connection problems, data access, network challenges, and software challenges;
- Document and track issues, queries, and tickets generated to minimize turnaround time to resolution.
- Manage and improve the data pipeline and data quality of programs
- Continuously assess the integrity of the data pipeline across tablets, servers, routers, mobile network connectivity, network boosters, and satellite connectivity to maximize the number of schools reporting program data remotely;
- Conduct testing processes for data quality of data obtained from tablets, monitoring systems, and other tools used to support the program;
- Conduct data validation and cleansing, where required.
Assist with software and hardware testing and quality assurance
- Provide support for functional testing of all hardware and equipment and maintain the status of all equipment on inventory systems;
- Contribute to documenting, sharing, and reporting test results;
- Collaborate with team members for the rollout of tested and approved software updates across all schools, through ISPs or directly.
Support new school installations:
- Collaborate with system engineers and software architects on setting up the required technology for delivery in schools;
- Collaborate with Technical Service Providers (TSPs) for the launch of new schools including security cabinet, solar, alarm, and wifi router installations;
- Support partners in commissioning and installing upgrades, repairs, maintenance and data transfers
Provide capacity building and technical training:
- Develop materials and conduct training for software updates, data collection, and issue management for ISP’s ICT staff and government ICT staff
- Build capacity of implementation partners, ministry staff, and district officials to adopt and using the standardised systems and tools that enable us to manage programs efficiently and effectively at scale.
Requirements
Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor’s Degree in a relevant field such as Technology, Engineering, IT Project Management, Data Science, Quality Assurance or any engineering discipline,
- 5+ years of proven work experience.
Ideal Candidate Profile
- Ability to communicate technical information clearly, and excellent written and oral communication skills in English
- Experience with multi-site and multi-vendor IT projects
- Experience with software and hardware quality assurance and testing
- Proven facilitation and technical training skills with diverse audiences
- Strong knowledge of computer hardware and software
- Experience of both iOS and Android operating systems
- Experience of using Github issues or similar to report and triage bugs
- Mac OS experience is beneficial
Additional Skills
- Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills and ability to proactively manage and resolve conflicts
- Strong organizational skills, superior attention to detail, ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
- Ability to adaptive strategies to address complex operational challenges
- Ability to work effectively in multicultural environments and teams
- Ability to engage in proactive problem-solving and issue-resolution
Qualities
- Passion for Imagine’s mission and vision
- Demonstrated commitment to equity in educational access and outcomes
- Passion for project management
- Demonstrated ability to think independently and solve problems
- Collaborative team player; clear and proactive communicator
- Flexible, adaptable, and able to work in a fast-paced, changing environment
Compensation & Benefits
Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience.
Location
The IT Manager must be based in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
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Imagine Worldwide is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.
