Location: This role is fully remote but must be available to meet with East Africa timezone by at least 2 hours a couple of times a week. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment Visas in the U.S. or U.K. at this time.

About this role

Technology plays a central role in how GiveDirectly delivers cash—whether that’s identifying recipients in hard-to-reach places, sending payments quickly after disasters, or powering the platforms our donors use to give.

We’re hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help build the systems behind this work. Our engineering team still operates like a startup within GiveDirectly—lean, fast-moving, and high-autonomy. You’ll lean into product thinking, help shape the roadmap, and collaborate closely across disciplines to solve real-world problems. The specific team you’ll join is still being finalized—it could be:

• Our Programs Engineering team (getting cash in the hands of people experiencing extreme poverty),
• Our Fundraising Engineering team (raising more money for recipients), or
• Our International Rapid Response team (getting cash to disaster-affected communities within 5 days of a crisis—anywhere in the world)

No matter the team, you’ll play a central role in scaling our impact: getting more money, to more people, more efficiently.

This is a hands-on role with real ownership. You’ll help shape architecture, ship production-ready code, and work side-by-side with teammates across product, data, and operations. We’re looking for someone excited to wear multiple hats, move quickly, and define what great engineering looks like in a mission-driven org

Level: Senior Software Engineer

Travel Requirement: Must be able to travel ~1-2 times per year to one of our countries of operation for team retreats or field visits.

What you’ll do:

• Design and build scalable, reliable systems that power our core operations—whether that’s donor platforms, systems that deliver payments directly to recipients, or crisis response tools reaching hundreds of thousands of people globally.
• Own end-to-end development of new features and services, from architecture through deployment and monitoring.
• Improve our developer workflows by strengthening CI/CD pipelines, reducing manual steps, and increasing test coverage.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (product, ops, data) to understand real-world needs and ship tools that directly support program delivery in the field.
• Debug and resolve production issues across our stack, with a focus on root cause analysis and long-term fixes.
• Advocate for sustainable engineering practices, including testing, documentation, and monitoring
• Help shape our tech roadmap with an eye toward scale, maintainability, and recipient experience

What you’ll bring:

• Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly Values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity. We welcome and strongly encourage applications from candidates who have personal or professional experience in the low-income and/or historically marginalized communities that we serve.
• Language Requirement: English
• 4+ years of industry experience creating production-caliber software and systems
• Experience with backend architecture: databases, cloud services, APIs
• Experience building infrastructure to deploy software
• Experience with strongly-typed, object-oriented programming such as Java, C#, Go, etc. and scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, etc.
• High degree of ownership and autonomy - you proactively advocate for ways to improve systems and constantly leave our codebase in a better state than you found it
• Strong analytical skills and communication - able to break down complex problems, describe technical trade-offs, and collaborate with cross-functional partners (e.g. technical program managers, product managers)
• Bonus: Experience using Python and AWS in a production environment
• Bonus: experience with payments/financial software and/or experience with microservice/serverless architecture

Compensation

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to calculate what we believe to be competitive pay based on role, location, and cost of living. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles. Read more about our compensation philosophy here.

Unless otherwise noted, the benefits stipend may be used to cover benefits or taken as additional taxable income.

United States

• Base Salary: $157,500
• Bonus at Target Performance: 15% (~$23,625, with potential for upside. For reference, with the organization’s current performance multiplier, this amount would be $27,641 in 2025)
• Estimated Total Compensation at Target: $181,125+
• Annual Benefits Stipend: $21,393

United Kingdom

• Base Salary: £108,150
• Bonus at Target Performance: 15% (~£16,223, with potential for upside. For reference, with the organization’s current performance multiplier, this amount would be £18,981 in 2025)
• Estimated Total Compensation at Target: £124,373+
• Annual Benefits Stipend: £2,760

Kenya

• Base Salary: $91,500
• Bonus at Target Performance: 15% (~$13,725, with potential for upside. For reference, with the organization’s current performance multiplier, this amount would be $16,063 in 2025)
• Estimated Total Compensation at Target: $105,225+
• Annual Benefits Stipend: $8,453

This role is fully remote, so if you are not based in the US, UK or Kenya, we will share an estimated salary benchmark for the country you are based in during the hiring process. 

Why work at GiveDirectly?

At GiveDirectly, we work to ensure that you have everything you need to excel in your role and on your team, including:

• A positive and supportive team with opportunities for advancement 
• A demonstrated commitment to helping all staff develop and grow
• A competitive salary, including bonus
• A robust health benefits plan (exact details will vary by country)
• Unlimited PTO (that we encourage staff to take!)
• Desk allowance and flexible work location

About this specific hiring process

• Take-home coding assignment
• Live Coding (60 mins)
• Systems Design (60 mins)
• Project Deep Dive + Behavioral (60 mins)

*It’s possible that there will be adjustments to this interview process. Any changes will be communicated to you during the process.

About One Acre Fund

Founded in 2006, One Acre Fund equips 5.5 million smallholder farmers to make their farms more productive. Across nine countries that together are home to two-thirds of Africa's farmers, we provide high-quality farm supplies, tree seedlings, accessible credit, modern agronomic training, and a wide range of other agricultural services. On average, this model enables any farmer to increase their income and assets on supported land by more than 35 percent, while permanently improving their resilience. This is all made possible by our team of 9,000+ full-time staff, drawn from diverse backgrounds and professions.

To learn more, please see our Why Work Here blog post.

About the Role

We believe that new technology is critical to building the most effective rural distribution network on the African continent. Today, we reach over 1.6 million farm families and we aspire to serve more than 10 million households in the coming decade. Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer, you will lead the development of our technology, focusing on a mobile tech transformation: providing our field staff with the mobile-based tools to reach more farmers; developing scalable, direct communication channels with farmers to improve customer service; and digitizing and decentralizing data collection tools to speed up data flows and improve efficiency.

We are looking for someone with the technical experience to bring this vision to life; the Director of Engineering will transform our technology into a core organizational strength, working through several development teams that cross our tech stack

Responsibilities

• Own the tech stack and overall architecture and strategic direction: You will guide our team to work toward a common vision of our tech stack, ensuring a robust solution across all of our technical needs whether back-office, client-facing, or business intelligence needs.
• Lead efficient delivery of impactful software products: Provide detailed, hands-on guidance for tech projects based on an intimate understanding of our clients and internal users. Maintain a robust and well-documented architecture, balancing elegant design with practical requirements across our functional needs.
• Leverage Talent into an Agile Center of Excellence: Support a talented team to work at their best - support Agile processes that go beyond scrum ceremonies to drive efficiency and excellence in all areas. Use new technologies to support the velocity and quality of deployments.
• Develop Leaders and Build Team: Manage a leadership team of ~5 senior-level direct reports, and increase career growth and performance across the division.
  • Grow the careers of leaders across the tech division through weekly check-ins and workshops, ongoing development feedback, and regular career reviews.
  • Provide technical mentorship to the team.
  • Lead recruitment efforts to ensure we are building our team with top talent.
  • Set clear performance expectations and support the team to build itself as a center of excellence.

Career Growth and Development

We have a strong culture of constant learning and we invest in developing our people. You’ll have weekly check-ins with your manager, access to mentorship and training programs, and regular feedback on your performance. We hold career reviews every six months, and set aside time to discuss your aspirations and career goals. You’ll have the opportunity to shape a growing organization and build a rewarding long-term career.

Qualifications

Across all roles, these are the general qualifications we look for. For this role specifically, you will have:

• 10+ years of industry experience with 5+ years leading and managing technology teams.
• Experience working with mobile technology solutions.
• Passion for providing hands-on execution guidance for large teams.
• Experience managing Agile software engineering teams successfully deploying solutions to support complex processes.
• Experience translating complex customer needs into high-quality tech solutions that deliver impact.
• Experience with our tech (C# .Net Core, CouchBase, React Native, and Kubernetes) and our tooling landscape (GitHub, JIRA, and Azure DevOps).
• Humility. We are looking for a passionate professional who combines a focus on excellent performance with good humor, patience, and a service mindset interested in joining our family of leaders.
• Language: English is required in all locations.

Preferred Start Date

As soon as possible

Job Location

Nairobi, Kenya; or Kigali, Rwanda (these two locations are preferred but we are open to locations within our program countries)

Benefits

Health insurance, housing, and comprehensive benefits

Eligibility

One Acre Fund can support a work permit for this role. However, nationals of (or those with an extensive professional background and work history in) our countries of operation are preferred.

Application Deadline

9 February 2026

One Acre Fund never asks candidates to pay any money or pay for tests at any stage of the interview process. Official One Acre Fund emails will always arrive from an @oneacrefund.org address. Please report any suspicious communication here (globalhotline@oneacrefund.org), but do not send applications or application materials to this email address.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), and anti-racism are deeply connected to our organization’s mission and purpose. One Acre Fund aspires to build a culture where all staff feel consistently valued, represented, and connected – so that our team can thrive as professionals, and achieve exceptional impact for the farmers we serve.

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.