Director of Engineering

Type: Full-time contractor (hours negotiable)
Location: Remote - Africa/Europe time zones (strong preference for candidates based in Africa)

OpenFn is the digital public good for public service automation & AI orchestration. Our platform automates data exchange and digital workflows so that governments and NGOs can deliver public services more efficiently, achieve interoperability across fragmented systems, and scale critical public services across health, humanitarian, and government programs.

Our team, Open Function Group, the primary steward of this open-source platform, is a lean, fully-remote team of integration specialists, solution architects, and implementation consultants working across 40+ countries. 

We are not making marginal improvements to already comfortable lives. We are building the infrastructure that allows governments to function, clinics to operate, and vulnerable populations to access services they depend on. The solutions you design and help deliver will shape whether a ministry can reach its citizens, whether a health system can act on its own data, and whether a government can adopt AI responsibly and on its own terms.

The role

We are hiring a Director of Engineering for our Services team to own solution quality,  technical strategy, and engineering delivery across OpenFn's implementation portfolio, taking responsibility for technical decisions from pre-sales conversations with prospective customers to implementation with government clients and final project handover.

This role sits at the intersection of enterprise architecture, integration design, software engineering, and implementation leadership. You will be the person who learns the OpenFn platform inside and out, its capabilities, its limits, and how to apply it well, and you will use that knowledge to guide internal and external implementation teams delivering workflow automation and interoperability solutions for government ministries, health systems, and large NGOs.

You will be the go-to technical expert for our software engineers and consultants when technical challenges arise in integration pipelines, local deployments, or solution design. You bridge knowledge gaps, resolve problems, and mentor the team in their work, bringing the engineering expertise, architectural judgment, and platform knowledge (we’ll teach you!) to move things forward with confidence. You establish best practice in code quality, working methods, and engineering approach.

Think of it as a hybrid of internal CTO, platform authority, solution architect, and technical quality lead for the services side of the business, which implements the OpenFn Digital Public Good for government and NGO customers in countries all over the world. You are not expected to own core product engineering, though you'll influence it heavily through the feedback loop described below. You are expected to ensure that every solution the Services team designs and ships is architecturally sound, fit-for-purpose, and built last. You will manage and mentor a global team of engineers, build lasting technical capacity in country IT teams, and help shape an open source project used in 40+ countries.

As a director-level hire, you will also help build the institutional knowledge that makes the whole team stronger over time: establishing architecture patterns and engineering best practices, defining what quality looks like, providing critical feedback to the core product and roadmap, and creating the resources that help OpenFn scale its implementation work without scaling its complexity.

What you’ll be doing

You will collaborate with technical teams, implementation partners, and government clients to design and develop data integration and workflow automation solutions that automate public services, orchestrate and safely leverage AI services, and enable smarter, more connected digital systems. Leveraging your expertise in software architecture, systems integration, deployment strategies, and modern development practices, you will deliver solutions that meet project scope, cost, and timeline requirements — and help governments transform their digital systems to deliver better public services.

Solution Architecture and Design Leadership

• Own technical architecture across the services portfolio, from pre-contract scoping through delivery
• Lead solution design for OpenFn-centered interoperability engagements: integration strategy, data flow architecture, API design patterns, system topology, and deployment approach
• Consult directly with government and NGO technical counterparts on OpenFn solution design and associated enterprise architecture strategy 
• Evaluate proposed use cases to determine whether they are a strong fit for the OpenFn platform; advise on constraints and alternative designs
• Vet proposed solutions against clear technical criteria, including scalability, efficiency, data volume, and appropriate engineering scope, so designs are neither over- nor under-built
• Assess where adaptor or core platform enhancements are needed to support a given integration design, and determine when a new or updated adaptor is the right solution versus a workaround

Technical Quality and Oversight

• Set and uphold the technical quality bar across the services portfolio, from solution design through to delivery and deployment
• Develop internal engineering and solution design standards and guidelines for what good looks like on an OpenFn implementation, and build the review processes that help the whole team work to that standard
• Conduct code reviews and provide hands-on technical mentorship to engineers and consultants, raising the bar on JavaScript competence and systems-level integration thinking
• Directly manage OpenFn's JavaScript engineering team, including regular one-on-ones, performance feedback, and career development

Team Leadership and Capacity Building

• Conduct code reviews and provide hands-on technical mentorship to OpenFn engineers and consultants, raising the bar on JavaScript competence, solution architecture design, and systems-level integration thinking
• Directly manage OpenFn's JavaScript engineering team, including regular one-on-ones, performance feedback, and career development
• Build lasting technical capacity in country IT teams and external contributors, so partners can operate and extend OpenFn solutions independently over time

Platform Expertise and Knowledge Management

• Become the organization's deepest practitioner of OpenFn as a solutions tool, understanding what the platform can and cannot do at scale and under real conditions
• Build and own a solutions architecture library: a structured knowledge base cataloging how OpenFn maps to different integration patterns, with honest documentation of platform fit and known limits
• Serve as the bridge between services and product: translate field learnings and performance constraints into structured product feedback, and bring roadmap awareness back into implementation planning and sales scoping

Deployment Architecture Strategy

• Own the architecture and technical strategy for local, offline, and sovereign-hosting deployments, including containerized, cloud, and hybrid environments, partnering with OpenFn's DevOps engineer on execution
• Develop deployment strategies and standards that implementation teams can apply consistently across diverse hosting configurations

Requirements

Desired Qualifications

To successfully ensure the technical quality of solutions implemented by the OpenFn services team, you should have the following qualifications and be comfortable consulting with a diverse range of technical stakeholders.

• Ability to work from home or a shared office space with fast, stable internet, preferably in a country that is located in Africa/Europe time zones
• 10-15+ years of experience in solution architecture, systems integration, or technical implementation leadership
• Proven experience managing and mentoring engineers, including regular one-on-ones, performance feedback, and career development; you will directly manage OpenFn's global, distributed JavaScript engineering team remotely
• Demonstrated expertise with integration platforms, middleware, or workflow automation tools, and the ability to assess platform fit with confidence; familiarity with platforms such as X-Road, OpenHIM, Kafka, Apache Camel, n8n, MuleSoft, Kong, Boomi, and/or WSO2 is a strong advantage
• Strong JavaScript / Node.js proficiency and experience with backend development and API integration patterns
• Ability to set and uphold a technical quality bar across a delivery portfolio, and to build the standards and processes that help a whole team work to that bar
• Experience training, coaching, or building technical capacity in partner/client-side teams
• Excellent written and verbal English communication, including facilitating technical workshops with government and NGO technical counterparts
• Working proficiency in French or Spanish is a major bonus
• Experience in a consulting or professional services context, where technical leadership and client-facing accountability coexist
• Ability to operate effectively in lean, distributed teams where judgment matters more than established process
• Familiarity with interoperability standards in global health or humanitarian systems, such as FHIR/HL7 and OpenHIE architecture, is a strong advantage
• Demonstrated familiarity with local and offline deployment architectures (e.g., on-premises, containerized, and hybrid/sovereign-hosting environments), as commonly required by government and NGO clients
• Working knowledge of DevOps practices, including CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and Docker/Kubernetes, sufficient to partner effectively with our dedicated DevOps engineer, is a plus
• Background working with Digital Public Goods, open source, government digital transformation programs, or NGO technology teams in Africa, Asia, or Latin America is a plus

Benefits

Financial compensation is commensurate with experience.
N.B.: Selling to NGO and government customers, we don’t offer Silicon Valley pay scales, but high quality of life and fair, transparent, and competitive compensation is important to us.

Flexible working schedule.

We’re fully remote, with team meetups across Europe and Africa (our last three were in Kigali, Cape Town, and Dakar). 

Exposure to hottest industry and technology trends and leading health and humanitarian interventions in the sector.

Opportunity for leadership and advancement. You will be a key contributor to our company’s strategy and direction. 

The opportunity to shape our strategy and impact millions of lives through our open source software in a small, mission-driven organization.