Full Stack Developer

Fika

At Fika, we envision a world where poverty caused by rural isolation no longer exists. Together with government, community, private sector, and impact-driven partners, we facilitate safe, reliable access through infrastructure solutions and have built more than 790 trail bridges, serving over 5.1 million community members throughout the world.

We provide flexible work arrangements, comprehensive mental and physical wellness support, and annual salary reviews aligned with our compensation policy. Additionally, we offer opportunities for professional growth, allowing individuals to shape their own career paths through targeted development programs.

Job Purpose

As a Full Stack Developer on Fika's digital team, you'll be both a builder and a product thinker in equal measure. Working closely with the Director of Digital Technology, you'll help scope, design, and ship the Fika Digital Platform: a suite of web applications that turn our research and data into tools governments and stakeholders use in their work to solve rural access challenges.

This role is a deliberate hybrid. Part of your time you'll be deep in code, building from the database up to the interface. The rest you'll wear a product manager's hat, interviewing users, framing the right problems, deciding what's worth building, and shaping where the platform goes next. We care deeply about design in our applications. The things you build shouldn't just work, they should feel good to use. If you take joy in building a beautiful map or data visualizations that tell stories, you'll fit right in.

Duties and responsibilities

You'll take early-stage ideas and turn them into things people can click, then help the best of them grow into real products. This role suits someone creative who thrives in ambiguity, ships quickly, has genuine taste, and gets why technology matters for communities cut off by distance. You'll work mainly in Python and front-end JavaScript frameworks (we're currently big fans of Svelte and next.js).

It's a fast-moving, experimental role built to help us validate ideas and use cases quickly. You'll partner closely with the Director of Digital Technology and our technical research groups, and interface across the whole organization to shape what we build. A rough sense of the day to day:

• Prototype to product: Take ideas from whiteboard to working demo in days, not weeks, then carry the promising ones through to polished, dependable products people rely on.
• Product scoping and management: Own the "what should we build, and why." Talk to stakeholders, define requirements, prioritize ruthlessly, and keep a clear view of where the platform is heading.
• User research: Interview users across very different cultural contexts, from country directors to field engineers to government partners, and translate what you hear into product decisions.
• Full stack development: Build rich, interactive interfaces (often map-based, using tools like Mapbox) and the backend behind them, including APIs, data plumbing, and cloud services on AWS.
• Design with taste: Sweat the details. Make interfaces non-technical users find obvious and enjoyable, not just functional.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Work alongside AI researchers, engineers, country directors, civil engineers, and researchers to turn technical workflows into tools people actually want to open.
• Speed and flexibility: Adapt as priorities shift. Experimentation is encouraged, and dead ends are sometimes part of that.

Qualifications

There is no formal education requirement; if you have relevant education, we will take that into account.

We’re looking for a track record of you taking the initiative to build creative projects that tell stories with technology and are designed with a mission in mind.

Generally, we are looking for someone with roughly 5-10 years of experience. This is a mid-level engineering role for someone that is interested in growth and potential future management of a team. 

We expect an ideal candidate will have somewhere around two thirds of the qualifications we mention below. Even if you don't fulfill all the criteria, you are encouraged to apply. We welcome applicants from diverse backgrounds and nontraditional paths.

Required Technical Skills

• Frontend Expertise: Deep experience with front end JavaScript Frameworks (we use Svelte), including component architecture, state management, and styling frameworks.
• Mapping Libraries: Familiarity with Mapbox, Leaflet, or other map tile or rendering libraries.
• Geospatial Data Science awareness: General understanding of Python, especially for geospatial data science workflows
• GIS awareness: Be familiar with GIS filetypes, how raster data and vector data can be visualized in digital settings.
• API Integration: Comfortable working with RESTful APIs, JSON payloads, and asynchronous calls etc.
• Database Experience: Some experience with relational databases like PostgreSQL or MySQL.
• Rapid Iteration: Ability to quickly prototype, test, and revise applications with minimal supervision.
• Git & CI/CD: Comfort with version control workflows and basic CI/CD tooling.
• AI/ML Curiosity: Interest in AI/ML systems, particularly geospatial foundation models or novel algorithms making remote sensing data actionable.
• Product scoping: You can take a fuzzy ask and turn it into a clear problem statement and a scoped first version, decide what's worth building now versus later (and say "not yet" with good reasons), and write the short spec that aligns a team without drowning anyone in process.

Preferred Experience

• Prior experience in early-stage startups or prototyping environments.
• Exposure to geospatial data and formats (GeoJSON, tilesets, raster data).
• Experience with visualizing big geospatial data or data from algorithms like ML embeddings.
• Comfort designing UIs for non-technical users or analysts.
• Previous work in international development context

Non-technical Skills

• Self-Starter: Comfortable taking initiative, scoping work independently, and managing ambiguity.
• Creative & Curious: Enjoys experimenting with new interfaces and technologies.
• Product-Oriented: Focused on end-user experience and delivering usable value quickly.
• Collaborative: Works well across technical and non-technical stakeholders, and with teams and stakeholders from diverse backgrounds.
• Flexible & Adaptable: Thrives in environments with competing priorities and shifting context.

Working conditions

This position is remote depending on the applicant's location, with the option to work in our offices in Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Kenya, or Denver, Colorado. Applicants may be based anywhere, preference will be given to candidates whose working hours substantially overlap with the Sub-Saharan Africa time zone.

Due to the global nature of our work and our stakeholder communities, some early morning or evening hours may be required to support global coordination.

Physical requirements

The incumbent will be required to remain seated for extended periods while working at a computer and must be available for occasional travel.

Direct reports

None

Application guidelines

We have seen firsthand the benefits of a diverse team, and the strength that comes with diversity in experience, background, and perspective. We strongly encourage applications from individuals that would bring a unique or underrepresented perspective to our organization.

CV Guidelines:

• Length: Maximum 2 pages.
• Education: Highlight relevant diplomas, degrees and recognized certifications 
• Exclude: personal information (photos, gender, religion, marital status, number of dependents), non-certified training.