ABOUT SAND
Sand Technologies is a fast-growing enterprise AI company that solves real-world problems for large blue-chip companies and governments worldwide.

We’re pioneers of meaningful AI: our solutions go far beyond chatbots. We are using data and AI to solve the world’s biggest issues in telecommunications, sustainable water management, energy, healthcare, climate change, smart cities, and other areas that have a real impact on the world. For example, our AI systems help to manage the water supply for the entire city of London. We created the AI algorithms that enabled the 7th largest telecommunications company in the world to plan its network in 300 cities in record time. And we built a digital healthcare system that enables 30m people in a country to get world-class healthcare despite a shortage of doctors.

We’ve grown our revenues by over 500% in the last 12 months while winning prestigious scientific and industry awards for our cutting-edge technology. We’re underpinned by over 300 engineers and scientists working across Africa, Europe, the UK and the US. 

ABOUT THE ROLE

Sand is expanding across Africa and beyond, partnering with governments and public sector officials to deliver transformative AI and data solutions. We have deployed our flagship platform - the Health Operating System (HOS) - in more than 5 countries already. 

In Rwanda, hundreds of clinics have already been digitized, transforming rural facilities into next-generation health centers that are redefining care in Africa. Sand’s groundbreaking HOS integrates data and services to drive better outcomes - from maternal health to chronic disease management - already reaching more than 1 million patients. Designed for digital empowerment, the HOS equips thousands of frontline health workers with the tools and support they need to magnify their impact and strengthen community health.

The HOS is already operational across multiple countries, with plans to expand to 16 countries by the end of 2026, led by our Country Directors. 

This is not an idea — it’s already happening, and the momentum is accelerating. But healthcare is only one example; Sand is growing in various industries, namely water, energy, and telecommunications.

We are looking for a Solution Manager to join our team who will work closely with the Ministry of Health (MoH) and our health system clients. You will be the strategic and operational anchor for all in-country activities—from managing the intelligence center launch to driving partnerships with Ministries of Health. You’ll wear two hats: country representative and solutions champion.

Our ideal candidate for this role is customer-obsessed, deeply curious, and adaptable in a dynamic environment. We’re looking for someone who will help define and scale our healthcare solutions as we continue to grow and expand. 

RESPONSIBILITIES 

• Serve as the in-country point of leadership for operations, stakeholder engagement, and execution.
• Oversee project implementation timelines, risks, and resources.
• Lead engagements with MoH and donor partners.
• Supervise systems integrators, deployment specialists, and support staff.
• Translate global product and tech roadmaps to local realities.
• Drive adoption and sustainability of the Intelligence Center.

REQUIREMENTS

• 7+ years leading health, tech, or development programs.
• Proven experience with government or multilateral partnerships.
• Excellent communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills.
• Bilingual (English + French) for French-speaking countries.
• Passion for building resilient digital health ecosystems.

Due to the considerable amount of virtual work and interaction with colleagues and customers in different physical locations internationally, it is essential that the successful applicant has the drive and ethic to succeed in working in small teams physically but in larger efforts virtually. Self-drive to communicate constantly using web collaboration and video conferencing is essential.

About Sand

Sand Technologies is a global Physical AI company using data and AI to make critical industries work better. We partner with governments, cities and enterprises to improve how essential systems operate across healthcare, water, energy, telecommunications and infrastructure.

Our work delivers proven real-world impact. We have built AI systems that help manage London’s water supply, supported telecom network planning across hundreds of cities, and developed digital healthcare platforms serving tens of millions of people across Africa. From intelligent command centers to AI-powered infrastructure platforms, we help organizations sense, analyze and act in complex environments.

Our people are ambitious, curious and relentlessly practical. Our teams work alongside clients in the field, solving hard problems and deploying solutions that last. With colleagues across Africa, Europe, the UK and the US, we operate across the full stack - from research and engineering to deployment and capability building.

Our mission is simple: to harness AI to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges.

About the role

Sand is scaling rapidly across Africa, partnering with Ministries of Health to deploy the Health Operating System (HOS) — a decision-support and execution platform that transforms how health systems sense, analyze, and act on data. The HOS is already operational across multiple countries, with plans to expand to 15 countries by end of 2026, supported by 80+ Forward Deployed Engineers.

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), you are the technical spearhead of our client engagement in Malawi. Unlike our roaming FDE roles, this is a permanently embedded position. You will be based full-time within the Ministry of Health in Malawi, becoming a long-term extension of the client's operational team. Your mandate is to build deep institutional relationships, develop comprehensive understanding of the national health system, and deliver sustained value over an extended engagement — not just rapid sprints, but lasting transformation.

This is not staff augmentation. You are an amalgamation of three roles:

1. The Software Engineer — Deep technical acumen to build and deploy production-grade solutions using Sand's product suite
2. The Product Manager — Strategic foresight to understand client problems, influence business objectives, and identify expansion opportunities
3. The Consultant — Client-facing finesse to navigate complex stakeholder relationships, manage scope, and transfer knowledge

Your primary mission is to prove our value fast, delivering functional solutions rapidly using Sand's products, playbooks, and tools, and then maturing those solutions into mission-critical infrastructure that the Ministry depends on daily. Over time, you become the institutional memory of the deployment — the person who understands the data landscape, the stakeholder dynamics, and the operational realities better than anyone.

Who We're Looking For

The Forward Deployed Engineer is a highly ambitious individual. You are someone who is deeply keen on learning — someone who dives in headfirst to solve some of the hardest, most complex problems in global health. You thrive on understanding the technology, understanding the stakeholders, understanding our product suite, and weaving all three together to deliver solutions that change how health systems operate.

This role is not for someone looking for comfort or routine. It is for someone who wants to step outside of their comfort zone, build something they can be proud of, and grow faster than they thought possible. The FDE programme is a career accelerator — an intensive rotation that exposes you to technical depth, strategic thinking, and client leadership in equal measure, all while working on problems that matter for millions of people.

For this permanently embedded role, you also need the maturity and resilience to sustain deep client relationships over months and years — not just weeks. You will become the face of Sand in Malawi, and that requires patience, cultural fluency, and the ability to navigate institutional complexity while maintaining momentum.

Key Responsibilities

Serve as Sand's Permanent Technical Presence in Malawi

• Embed full-time within the Ministry of Health, becoming a trusted member of the client's extended team
• Develop deep, longitudinal understanding of the national health data landscape, institutional dynamics, and operational priorities
• Build and maintain relationships across all levels of the Ministry — from frontline data officers to senior leadership
• Act as the primary technical point of contact for all Sand activities in-country, coordinating with launchers, country directors, and visiting FDE teams

Drive On-Site Value Delivery

• Rapidly unlock, explore, and integrate client data sources (e.g., DHIS2, SCADA systems, network management platforms, operational databases)
• Understand client problems through prototyping and rapid value delivery — deploying POCs and MVPs using Sand's product components and playbooks
• Transition initial solutions into hardened, production-grade systems that the Ministry relies on daily
• Own the long-term health of deployed solutions — monitoring adoption, troubleshooting issues, and iterating based on user feedback
• Deliver and track value generated through deployment of Sand products

Enable Product-Led Growth

• Lead with Sand's existing product suite — know the products by heart and where each solution is most effective for the domain you're deployed in
• Document learnings, client challenges, and successful solutions as reusable patterns for the broader FDE community
• Drive discovery and expansion by uncovering new opportunities on the ground

Build Local Capacity and Sustainability

• Work alongside Ministry teams to co-create solutions and progressively transfer knowledge, ensuring they can operate and maintain systems independently
• Identify, recruit, and mentor local data engineers, scientists, and analysts to build sustainable in-country capacity
• Develop training materials and documentation tailored to the local context, language, and skill level
• Be the continuity that ensures handover isn't a cliff — you bridge the gap between Sand's deployment and the Ministry's long-term ownership

Feed the Platform Feedback Loop

• Channel field learnings back to improve the core product through structured mechanisms (Technical Deep Dives, Solution Swarms, pattern documentation)
• Turn "gravel roads" into "paved superhighways" — document solution patterns so the next FDE can move faster
• Contribute field feedback that influences 30% of the product roadmap

Requirements — Essential

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical field
• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, data science, system deployment, or technical leadership
• Proficiency in at least one of: Python, SQL/PostgreSQL, JavaScript — with ability to write production-grade code
• Strong problem-solving skills with a bias toward action and rapid prototyping
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills — comfortable presenting to senior government or corporate stakeholders and translating between technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience working with or deploying to government, public sector, or large institutional clients
• Proven ability to lead local technical teams and build capacity
• Willingness to relocate and be permanently based in Malawi for the duration of the engagement (12-24+ months)
• Language: Local language proficiency is a significant advantage

Requirements — Preferred

• Experience with data integration, ETL pipelines, and working with diverse data sources
• Experience in one or more of Sand's focus domains: health informatics/digital health, water utility operations, telecommunications network operations, or energy systems
• Familiarity with domain-specific platforms (e.g., DHIS2, OpenMRS for health; SCADA, GIS for water/energy; OSS/BSS for telecom)
• Experience with BI and dashboarding tools, particularly Apache Superset
• Experience with data transformation tools such as dbt or Airflow
• Comfort working with data dictionaries, reporting requirements, and identifying common data quality issues
• Knowledge of data security, privacy, and interoperability standards (e.g., FHIR for healthcare, GDPR, local data sovereignty requirements)
• Experience operating in resource-constrained environments (unreliable power, limited connectivity)

Work Environment

This is a permanently embedded role. You will work on-site at the Ministry of Health in Malawi 4 days per week, with 1 day for focused remote work, internal collaboration, and knowledge sharing with the broader FDE community. You should expect to be based in Malawi for a minimum of 12-24 months.

You must be self-driven, comfortable operating as Sand's primary technical representative in-country, and disciplined with online collaboration tools to stay connected with the broader Sand team across geographies. Cultural sensitivity, adaptability, and genuine interest in the local context are essential — you are not passing through, you are putting down roots.

About Imagine Worldwide

All children have immense potential, but hundreds of millions don’t have access to the learning they need. Imagine Worldwide believes that every child should be empowered with the basic right to literacy and numeracy. We provide an innovative education technology solution and implementation model to the global literacy/numeracy learning crisis using the onebillion application and various toolkits and systems to support implementation. Our model is massively scalable, evidence-based, and can deliver foundational learning to millions of the most marginalized children.

Imagine Worldwide partners with governments, organizations, and communities to provide child-directed, tablet-based learning that is accessible, effective, and affordable. We are incorporated in California (United States) as a nonprofit organization, but operate in Sub-Saharan Africa through locally-registered entities in Malawi, Sierra Leone and Tanzania. Learn more on our website.

About the Role

The Senior Director of Delivery is the second most senior leadership role in the organization, reporting directly to the Executive Director and serving as a key driver of Imagine Worldwide Malawi’s strategy and impact. This position plays a central role in advancing Imagine’s mission to design, deliver, and scale high-quality tablet-based learning solutions that enable children across Malawi to achieve foundational literacy and numeracy at national scale.

This role carries significant organizational value and influence. The Senior Director of Delivery is responsible for translating strategy into execution by ensuring that programs, technology, logistics, data systems, and partner engagement are aligned and operating effectively. The position provides executive-level oversight to ensure that implementation plans move beyond design into measurable, real-world impact in schools and communities.

Working across both global and in-country teams, the Senior Director of Delivery drives alignment, accountability, prioritization, and cross-functional problem-solving. The role ensures that learning programs launch successfully, operate reliably, and continuously improve through strong systems, data-driven decision-making, and collaborative leadership. As a senior organizational leader, the Senior Director of Delivery also contributes to shaping institutional culture, strengthening operational excellence, and guiding teams through periods of growth and scale.

The successful candidate will join a highly committed and collaborative leadership team dedicated to empowering every child, everywhere to reach their full potential. This position requires a strategic thinker with strong execution skills, the ability to lead across diverse teams and stakeholders, and a passion for delivering large-scale education transformation in Malawi.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Delivery Leadership

• Provide leadership and accountability for coordinated delivery across Programs, MEAL, Logistics, and Technical Services, ensuring work is coordinated to achieve program outcomes and operational reliability
• Serve as the country's primary integrator for delivery execution, ensuring leadership receives one coherent view of delivery progress, constraints, and decision needs.
• Shape and translate the country scale plan into clear delivery outcomes (e.g., launch readiness, device uptime, training completion, data completeness, time-on-task enablement) and hold delivery leaders accountable.
• Ensure coordination with global functions as needed and alignment with Imagine’s key performance areas and indicators.
• Contribute to discussions, policy notes, etc., as needed, on national scale and government transition.

Delivery Planning 

• Develop and own a single integrated delivery plan that synchronizes all delivery workstreams (launch preparation and recurring operations), with clear milestones, dependencies, resourcing assumptions, and accountable owners.
• Establish and lead a delivery operating rhythm (planning, execution reviews, performance reviews, and retrospectives) that drives disciplined execution, early risk detection, and timely decision-making.
• Balance competing priorities across delivery functions and make unified prioritization calls grounded in mission outcomes, data, capacity constraints, and delivery risk.
• Define and monitor delivery KPIs; track performance trends via a delivery performance dashboard; and drive corrective actions through structured data reviews and cross-functional problem-solving.
• Own delivery risk management and escalation by maintaining a delivery risks and issues register, proactively identifying material risks, defining mitigation plans with clear owners and timelines, and ensuring risks are escalated early through agreed pathways.
• Lead incident response for material delivery disruptions (e.g., rollout delays, uptime failures, safety/security incidents impacting learning, partner underperformance) by coordinating rapid triage, containment, root-cause analysis, and prevention of recurrence.
• Ensure transparent progress and governance reporting, including decision logs, escalation pathways, and measurement systems that support delivery improvement through data quality assurance and actionable insights.

Operational Excellence

• Build and maintain standardized training systems, SOPs, and capacity-building programs that ensure consistent, high-quality delivery at scale. Oversee delivery-critical partner performance (e.g., ISPs and service providers), ensuring clear expectations, coordinated work, and timely issue resolution.
• Codify best practices and policies that reduce institutional knowledge gaps and increase delivery resilience.
• Partner with the ED as a senior leader, providing integrated delivery oversight and escalating only the highest-priority issues requiring ED intervention. Contribute to the country leadership team by role-modeling Imagine values, driving organizational health, and leading through ambiguity and change.

People Management

• Line manage the delivery function leads (Directors of Program, Director Technical Services, Logistics Manager, and MEAL Manager). 
• Lead and manage staff reporting to them, setting clear expectations, priorities, and performance standards.
• Develop leadership capacity through coaching, feedback, performance management, and succession planning to support scale and sustainability.

Requirements

The successful candidate will possess the following competencies, experiences, and qualities:

Education and Work Experience

Bachelor's degree or higher with a minimum of 10 years of progressive experience in operations leadership, program delivery, or a similar senior role, including at least 5 years managing teams. Management consulting experience is a plus. 

Role-Specific Skills Required

• Significant experience in managing successful program scaling.  
• Proven track record in managing scale operations in complex environments working with multiple partners 
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English
• Strong ability to analyze and interpret data to inform decisions, coupled with proven project management skills to plan, execute, and deliver projects effectively.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship-building skills and ability to proactively manage and resolve conflicts
• Excellent understanding of budgets, financial processesR, reporting requirements, and compliance regulations within donor-funded grants and contracts
• Ability to work effectively in multicultural environments and teams 
• Strong organizational skills, superior attention to detail, ability to work under pressure and meet deadlines
• Compensation & Benefits

Location

The Senior Director of Delivery must be based in Malawi

Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis

* * *

Imagine Worldwide is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.