The African Leadership University (ALU) is on a rapid growth trajectory, projecting an increase in its student body from the current 360 to over 25,000 across multiple campuses and online platforms ('cloud') within the next 5–7 years. To support this massive scale-up, ALU is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer to assume the role of Platform Engineering Lead, spearheading the design, optimization, and governance of the organization's critical digital infrastructure.
This is a key hands-on technical leadership position, central to defining the technical architecture, establishing robust development practices, and shaping delivery models. This role is ideal for an individual who thrives in a builder environment, sets high technical standards, and is committed to leaving a lasting mark on the technology infrastructure of a mission-driven institution.
Role Responsibilities
- Lead the software architecture and software development across ALU’s platforms (Salesforce, AWS, Oracle NetSuite, and others).
- Remain an active technical contributor through hands-on coding, architecture design, and performing code reviews to ensure technical excellence and scalability.
- Design scalable, modular system architectures, including microservices-based approaches where appropriate.
- Establish and manage stable environments for development, QA, and production; ensuring reliable deployment pipelines and traceability.
- Optimize and secure API and cloud infrastructure, implementing robust monitoring, observability, and documentation standards.
- Reduce technical debt by establishing consistent build pipelines, version control practices, and enforcing unit & regression testing before production releases.
- Collaborate across vendors and internal teams to standardize code quality, enforce DevOps practices (CI/CD, automated testing, environment parity), and align technical workflows.
- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to product teams, setting the bar for quality and security.
- Ensure technology choices balance scale, flexibility, and cost-efficiency.
- Ensure the safety and well-being of all young persons and vulnerable adults by adhering to ALU’s comprehensive safeguarding policy, maintaining a zero-tolerance approach to any violations of safeguarding standards.
Requirements and Qualifications
- 9+ years of experience in platform engineering, DevOps, or full-stack software development.
- BA/BSc/HND qualification.
- Salesforce and AWS certifications preferred (or equivalent demonstrated expertise).
- Proven experience as the technical lead or principal engineer in environments where you set standards and guided teams.
- Hands-on experience in API design, CI/CD pipelines, and cloud infrastructure management, with version control and collaboration using Git and Jira.
- Strong experience with AWS, Oracle NetSuite, or similar enterprise platforms.
- Proficient in setting up and managing secure, scalable development environments and automation pipelines.
- Strong grasp of software architecture, including monolith-to-microservice transitions.
- Experience working with external vendors and ensuring delivery quality across multiple partners.
- Full-stack development experience is a plus.
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