ABOUT ALU

ALU provides higher education for a higher purpose. Our students declare missions, not majors. They develop the real-world skills to take on the world’s most pressing challenges. And they take ownership of their learning from day one through our peer and student-led approach – because ALU believes in the power and agency of young people to start shaping the future right now.

Together with a world-class faculty and staff, our students are igniting a ripple of positive impact across Africa and the world.

Our mission is not going unnoticed. CNN described ALU — which has campuses in Mauritius and Rwanda —  as “The Harvard of Africa;” Fast Company ranked ALU one of the 50 most innovative organizations in the world and the most innovative endeavor in Africa; and The New York Times recognized ALU as one of the eight places in the world “where history is being made.” Join us.

HOW WE WORK

As a high-growth start-up, the ALU Team works in starkly different ways to traditional academic bureaucracies. We approach education from first principles, empower individuals to design, test, and implement creative new ideas, and work closely together to craft transformative learning experiences. We are deeply passionate about our students and excited by the challenge of building something entirely new.

ABOUT THE TEAM

Teaching and learning is central to what we do at ALU. To this end the Technology Team deploys and maintains technical platforms that enable the smooth running and continuous improvement  of activities associated with student recruitment, teaching, and learning. 

ABOUT THE ROLE

We  are looking for a Senior Data Engineer with an exceptional commitment to service excellence, experience developing and managing data environments on the AWS platform, and strong communications skills to join ALU’s Technology Team. The Senior Data Engineer will oversee the organization’s data integration work, including developing a data model, maintaining a data warehouse and analytics environment, and writing scripts for data integration and analysis. 

This role will work closely and collaboratively with members of the ALU Data Guild and departmental stakeholders to define requirements, mine and analyze data, integrate data from a variety of sources, and deploy high quality data pipelines in support of the analytics needs of ALU and its affiliates. They will also create and oversee an automated reporting system and manage other proprietary systems. This role reports to the CPTO and is a member of the Tech Management Team.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Maintain and build ALU’s data warehouse and analytics environment -- the home for nearly all of ALU’s academic and operational data.
• Design, implement, test, deploy, and maintain stable, secure, and scalable data engineering solutions and pipelines in support of data and analytics projects, including integrating new sources of data into our data warehouse, and publishing data to applications and affiliates.
• Work with stakeholders to build reports and data visualizations, using data from the data warehouse and other sources.
• Produce scalable, replicable code and engineering solutions that help automate repetitive data management tasks.
• Provide secure access to data marts to enable internal and external stakeholders to perform ad hoc and recurrent data analysis.
• Implement and monitor best in class security measures in our data warehouse and analytics environment, with an eye towards the evolving threat landscape.
• Train ALU staff to access data, create reports, and perform analysis.
• Other duties as assigned.

REQUIREMENTS

The ideal candidate will possess a majority of the following:

• Strong command of relational databases and SQL. 
• 3+ years of experience performing extract, transform, and load (ETL) of data into  relational databases.
• 2+ years of experience working in the AWS data environment, including Redshift, Glue, S3, DynamoDB, Athena, and QuickSight.
• Experience using AI/ML for predictive modeling and insight extraction.
• Proficiency with Python or R, especially for data manipulation and analysis, and ability to build, maintain and deploy sequences of automated processes with these tools.
• Experience with Salesforce as a data source.
• Proficiency creating data models using star or snowflake schemas.
• Experience using APIs to push and pull data from various data systems and platforms.
• High degree of comfort with ambiguity and able to work independently, as well as part of a team.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Located in a timezone with at least 4 working hours overlap with Central African Time Zone.
• A Bachelor’s Degree in a technology-related field or equivalent combination of education and professional experience.