About the ONE Academy Project

ONE Academy is a free dynamic online learning platform designed to equip global activists and young people with the knowledge, tools, and skills to drive social change, promoting healthier lives and economic vitality in their communities. The platform is built to be accessible, interactive, and scalable, delivering high-quality educational content while fostering peer learning and community engagement, including in low-bandwidth environments.

For this project, ONE Academy will build on its existing platform to support foundational learning reform and youth-led advocacy in Kenya and Senegal to improve learning outcomes. This training module will be hosted on the ONE Academy platform and delivered in English, French, Wolof, and Swahili, with the aim of supporting real-world foundational learning system reform efforts in both countries.

Role Purpose

The Foundational Learning Lead will drive the end-to-end design and delivery of ONE Academy’s flagship learning module. As the technical authority on learning design and pedagogy, they will both create high-quality learning materials and ensure all content meets rigorous standards of instructional quality, relevance, and evidence-based practice.

They will play a critical role in translating foundational learning concepts into engaging, accessible, and action-oriented learning experiences for young people, with a strong emphasis on advocacy and real-world application. The role includes leading curriculum design, aligning inputs from partners, and overseeing the creation of engaging, evidence-based learning materials. 

Project Duration

May - October 2026

In this role, the successful candidate will:

• Define the learning architecture, curriculum, and progression pathways;
• Develop high-quality learning materials across all units;
• Guide, review, and ensure the quality of all materials;
• Align inputs from partners to ensure coherence;
• Ensure the program is pedagogically sound, engaging, and actionable.

 Core Responsibilities

1. Learning Strategy & Curriculum Design

• Lead the design of the overall learning framework and curriculum structure that is engaging, interactive, and tailored to youth audiences.
• Define learning objectives, competencies, and progression pathways.
• Structure the module across thematic units including:
  1. Structured Pedagogy Fundamentals;
  2. Targeted Instruction Principles;
• Science of Teaching Principles;
• Data & Evidence for Decision-Making;
• National Language Instruction – teaching kids in a language they understand;
• Responsible AI for Learning Outcomes;
• Investment Case for Foundational Learning – cost effectiveness + budgeting;
• Government Engagement, Civil Society Collaboration, and Coalition building;
• Youth Movement-Building.

1. Pedagogical Oversight & Quality Assurance

• Set instructional design standards for all learning materials.
• Review and validate materials produced by multimedia teams, ensuring it is evidence-based; contextually relevant, and engaging for youth audiences.

1. Content Design

• Design detailed lesson plans, core instructional content, and activities for each unit, ensuring clarity and coherence, strong learning outcomes, and practical applicability.
• Develop assessment tools such as quizzes, reflection prompts, and applied learning tasks.
• Incorporate interactive and participatory elements (e.g. decision-making exercises) to drive youth engagement and retention.

1. Localization & Relevance

• Ensure curriculum is adaptable across Kenya and Senegal contexts as well as multiple languages (EN, FR, WO, SWA).

1. Low-resource Settings Adaptation 

• Define learner experience requirements for accessibility and engagement in low-resource settings (e.g., offline features, mobile-first, low bandwidth).
• Assess and validate whether ONE Academy’s features effectively support learner uptake, comprehension, and engagement in low-resource settings. Recommend adjustments to content and learning design as needed.

1. Youth-Centered Design

• Integrate youth feedback into curriculum refinement.
• Ensure the learning experience supports:
  • Action-oriented advocacy;
  • Movement-building skills;
  • Real-world application including clear pathways from learning to action.

1. Collaboration & Advisory

• Work closely to advise product and platform teams, external subject-matter experts, and country partners.
• Support coherence across all components of the program.
• Learning Framework & Curriculum Architecture

• (competencies, structure, unit outlines)
• Detailed Module Design & Learning Material
  (learning objectives, authored lesson content, scripts, activities, and assessments across all units)
• Instructional Design Guidelines
  (for external multimedia content developers)
• Quality Assurance Reviews
  (validated script and learning materials)
• Localization Guidance
  (adaptation approach for Kenya & Senegal contexts)
• Feedback Loop & Continuous Improvement (to glean outcomes and feedback from learners, country partners, and stakeholders)

  Success Indicators

• Curriculum is:
  • Pedagogically sound;
  • Coherent across all units;
  • Adaptable across countries and languages.
  • Tailored to youth audiences (18-35).
• Learning content produced meets defined instructional quality standards.
• Demonstrated impact through positive feedback from pilot learners, country partners, and key stakeholders.
• Strong learner engagement and completion during the pilot phase.

 Required Qualifications

• Master’s degree (or higher) in Education, Curriculum Design, Pedagogy, or related field.
• 5+ years’ experience in foundational learning and curriculum and instructional design.
• Proven experience designing engaging, action-oriented learning experiences for youth (18-35), ideally linked to advocacy, civic engagement, or social impact.
• Demonstrated expertise in evidence-based pedagogy and learning design for low-resource context.
• Strong skills in youth-focused storytelling, messaging, and learner engagement.
• Excellent ability to translate theory into practical learning design and provide structured feedback to multidisciplinary teams.
• Strong understanding of advocacy with civil society and engagement with government.
• Experience reviewing and guiding e-learning content development.
• Proven experience designing youth-focused programs or campaigns. 

Preferred

• Multilingual with proficiency in English and French (Compulsory).
• Experience in Kenya and/or Senegal.
• Familiarity with multilingual education environments.
• Exposure to digital learning platforms or edtech.

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 Nigeria. Unlike our roaming FDE roles, this is a permanently embedded position. You will be based full-time within the Ministry of Health in Nigeria, 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 Nigeria, 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 Nigeria

• 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 Nigeria 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 Nigeria 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 Nigeria 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.