Strategy & Planning

•   In partnership with the company’s founders, identify opportunities and risks for delivering the company’s services as a mobile and web-based business, including identification of competitive services, opportunities for innovation, and assessment of marketplace obstacles and technical hurdles to the business success.
•   Identify technology trends and evolving social behavior that may support or impede the success of the business.
•   Evaluate and identify appropriate technology platforms (including web application frameworks and the deployment stack) for delivering the company’s services.
•   Lead strategic planning to achieve business goals by identifying and prioritizing development initiatives and setting timetables for the evaluation, development, and deployment of all web-based services.
•   Establish a governance process that meets government, partner, and company expectations for customer information privacy.
•   Direct development and execution of an enterprise-wide information security plan that protects the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the company’s data and servers.
•   Direct development and execution of an enterprise-wide disaster recovery and business continuity plan.
•   Communicate the company’s technology strategy to investors, management, staff, partners, customers, and stakeholders.

Implementation & Deployment

•   As a member of the senior management team, participate in the selection and registration of the company’s mobile and web site domain names, including any related-but-unused domains that could compromise the integrity of the business (through competition, typosquatting, etc.).
•   Select and set up a software revision control sytem and repository
•   Select and set up mobile and web-based internal communications systems, such as a wiki, blog, chatroom, project management, and bug tracking systems
•   Collaborate with the founders and potential customers to develop use cases (or user stories) and specifications that describe the implementation of the company’s services as a mobile and web application.
•   Collaborate with a User Experience Designer and potential customers to prepare wireframes or mockups of a prototype of the company’s web application.
•   As a member of the senior management team, participate in the selection of a graphic designer who will create the company corporate identity and design the web and mobile application’s look and feel. Ensure that the graphic designer has sufficient web experience, follows guidelines established in the User Experience design process, and delivers assets that can be easily adapted to web requirements.
•   Select and manage company staff or outsourced vendors who will implement a design as web and mobile pages using appropriate web and mobile development technologies; conforming to web and mobile standards.
•   Select or define the company’s software development methodology.
•   Establish a specification conformance and testing regimen based on user stories and the User Experience design.
•   Promulgate coding conventions and documentation standards.
•   Review current best practices for the selected web framework and establish the initial architecture for the application.
•   Select and manage company staff or outsourced vendors who will implement the application.
•   Establish and supervise the software development process, setting short-term objectives and assessing progress as defined by the selected software development methodology.
•   Conduct code reviews and specification conformance testing as defined by the selected software development methodology.
•   Establish and supervise a quality assurance process, including integration and system testing.
•   Select, deploy, and monitor performance profiling tools and procedures.
•   Review and approve proposed development releases and manage the release process.
•   Evaluate and select web application hosting providers.
•   Establish an application deployment process and supervise deployment to staging and production servers.
•   Monitor application performance and review any application failures in staging or production.
•   Establish and monitor a web analytics regime that measures site traffic and application usage relative to business goals.
•   Support the marketing process by providing implementation of technical requirements for Internet marketing and search engine optimization.
•   As a member of the senior management team, establish a customer service and support process, with particular responsibility for mobile and web-based services that implement the support function. Establish a process to integrate customer service and support with the software engineering process to support resolution of customer issues and improve application usability.

Operational Management

•   Maintain up-to-date knowledge of technology standards, industry trends, emerging technologies, and software development best practices by attending relevant conferences and reading widely
•   Define and communicate company values and standards for acquiring or developing systems, equipment, or software within the company.
•   Ensure that technology standards and best practices are maintained across the organization.
•   Share knowledge, mentor, and educate the organization’s investors, management, staff, partners, customers, and stakeholders with regard to the company’s technological vision, opportunities, and challenges.
•   Ensure company technical problems are resolved in a timely and cost-effective manner.
•   Develop, track, and control the development and deployment annual operating and capital budgets for purchasing, staffing, and operations.
•   Supervise recruitment, training, retention, and organization of all development staff in accordance with the company hiring process, personnel policies, and budget requirements.
•   Establish standards of performance and monitor conformance for staff (through performance review) and vendors (through service level agreements).
•   Ensure the company’s internal technological processes and customer-facing services comply with community expectations and applicable laws and regulations for privacy, security, and social responsibility.
•   Promote achievement of the company’s business goals within a context of community collaboration by developing policies for sharing software code, technological innovation, business processes, and other intellectual property.
•   Contribute to open source software development, standardization of technologies, and evolution of best practices by collaborating with peers outside the company, releasing code, presenting at conferences, and writing for publication (online or offline).

Qualification Required & Experience

•   University degree in the field of computer science, business administration, or another rigorous discipline. An advanced degree in one these fields is a plus.

Knowledge & Experience

•   Demonstrated ability to envision mobile and web-based social commerce and financial technology services.
•   At least 5 years experience managing mobile and web application development.
•   At least 3 years experience with startup companies.
•   Hands-on experience coding in more than one currently popular mobile and web application framework.
•   Familiar with more than one software development methodology.
•   Ability to discern user requirements and develop specifications.
•   Has contributed to one or more open source projects.
•   Skill with the above mentioned technology tools.
•   Knowledge of web and mobile standards.
•   Experience with UNIX system administration and web server configuration.
•   Knowledge of Internet protocols and RFC standards, database management systems, and revivion control systems.
•   Familiarity with technical requirements of Internet marketing and search engine optimization.
•   Familiarity with information security vulnerabilities and risk management.
•   Familiarity with consumer privacy and payments industry compliance requirements.
•   Exposure to business theory, business process development, governance processes, management, budgeting, and administrative operations.

Personal Attributes

•   Proven leadership ability.
•   Ability to set and manage priorities judiciously.
•   Excellent written and oral communication skills.
•   Excellent interpersonal skills.
•   Ability to articulate ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences.
•   Exceptionally self-motivated and directed.
•   Keen attention to detail.
•   Superior analytical, evaluative, and problem-solving abilities.
•   Exceptional service orientation.
•   Ability to motivate in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
•   A consistent top performer who is able to exceed goals and expectations
•   Should have passion for startups and have a desire to excel at greater heights
•   Should be or have ever been a technical leader and an experienced developer with preferably over 5 or 10 years’ experience with a software company; preferably a social network, e-commerce or fin-tech company
•   Should possess architectural authority and technical responsibility for multiple products and services preferably in a fin-tech/ personal finance/ online store/e-commerce/social media or a combination of products and services such as listed above.
•   A proven innovator, preferably with a considerable number of software patents.
•   Should be conversant with a few or preferably all of the following technologies;  ActiveMQ, Apache, Axis, BGP, C/C++, CatOS, CC/PP, cHTML, JIRA, CVS, DNS, GNU, Hibernate, Ant, HTML, HTTP, IBM MQ, IMAP, IOS, IP, J2EE, J2ME, J2SE, JAXP, JDBC, JFC, JMS, JNDI, Java, Flex, COCO ,Java Mail, Java RMI, Java Servlets, JavaServer Pages, LDAP, Linux, M4, MPLS, MRTG, MySQL, OSPF, Intelij IDEA, Oracle DB, Perl, RPM, RRD, SOAP, SQL, SSL, SVN, Solaris, Spring, TeamCity Squid, Sybase DB,Tomcat, TCP, Tibco EMS, UAProf, UDP, Unix, Varnish, VLAN, VRF, VoiceXML, WAP, WCCP, WML, WSDL, WSRM, Windows, XHTML, XML, YUI,XSLT

Location: Accra

How To Apply For The Job

Send a cover letter explaining why you are the best candidate to join our team. All CVs and cover letters are to be directed to:-

kwakye.nanayaw@gmail.com

Closing Date: 16 June, 2015