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.

Who We Are

NewGlobe supports visionary governments to transform public education systems, the cornerstone of a prosperous, equitable, and peaceful society.

With a comprehensive system transformation platform and data-driven educational services, NewGlobe delivers rapid and dramatic improvements in learning outcomes at state and nationwide scale. Through building impactful partnerships and programmes, NewGlobe ensures that all children have access to an education that will develop their full potential and create a foundation for growth and prosperity. 

NewGlobe leverages more than a decade of educational experience and proven impact in integrated school management, teacher professional development, instructional design innovation, technological system support, child-centered classroom practice, and parent engagement -- all grounded in learning science -- to ensure each teacher is empowered to engage children in transformational learning, and all children have the opportunity to develop to their full potential. Every day, NewGlobe supports governments to solve what were once seen as intractable problems, and by doing so, ensures this generation will be able to grow up to lead more fulfilled lives, while simultaneously building economic prosperity for themselves, their communities, and the globe. 

NewGlobe’s high-touch, intensive professional development programs, along with integrated school management, teacher support, and assessment software, enable schools to succeed. NewGlobe works within state and national curriculum and syllabi, ensuring all children are empowered to learn their own history, and master local content, while being globally competitive in mathematics and languages. The science of behaviour change and the science of learning is at the foundation of all programming. 

NewGlobe works with urgency because youth quickly becomes adulthood and relentlessly because improvement requires continuous problem-solving. NewGlobe is honoured to serve and to help rebuild trust in public systems. 

NewGlobe’s work is all encompassing and will challenge you to use your full mind, and heart, each day. We need bright minds who want to be part of building a new globe -- a more equitable globe -- to join us. 

Policy & Partnerships Department

The Policy & Partnerships team engages with visionary political and Government leadership to help shape policy, strengthen delivery and impact complex education systems through comprehensive technical support. We work to ensure policies support children’s access, opportunity and advancement, and that there is an enabling environment for governments to work with technical assistance partners to enact large-scale system transformation. We ensure close collaboration, communication, and engagement with our government partners whom we serve in existing programs and the rest of the delivery teams to ensure we deliver on the promise of our program, and that the government sees solutions coming to the fore, and is participating in the work and recognizes the impact taking place. In support of the government program, may also engage with other dynamic influencers (NGOs, think-tanks, academicians, and bi- and multilateral agencies) to unlock additional support for our government programming and children in underserved communities. It is our responsibility to ensure that the program we deliver is understood by our government partner, and to negotiate any changes or updates or new needs in the program as it evolves, and to seek its expansion and renewal, based on successful track-record and measured improved learning and positive impact.

About the Role

As the Manager, you will help the Programme meet legislative goals by creating proposals and working with government agencies. You are on top of research on government policies and laws, manage internal and external communication and have a large resource base of personnel in the public sector.

What You Will Do

• Work closely with the Programme Development counterparts and regional leadership, be responsible for overseeing key government relationships and programming. To do this, you’ll lead government engagement, training and stakeholder meetings.
• Ensure creation of governance committees according to core programming guidelines, and establish a regular meeting schedule.
• Ensure thorough weekly and monthly reporting to the government begins and is continued under permanent programme leadership.
• Manage and oversee all Policy and Partnerships program staff (focussed on Programme Management).
• Manage the diverse strategic stakeholder management across multiple Government departments and levels within those departments; with prominent education ecosystem stakeholders, including but not limited to the local and national teacher labour unions; and important 'influencers’ to ensure the successful and popular launch of the government’s new programme.
• Establish and implement short- and long-range goals, objectives, policies and operating procedures for the government relations support function; monitor and evaluates program effectiveness; effects changes required for improvement;
• Map all key government officials, and create a plan for management of each;
• Work with key stakeholders on consultative efforts to drive reforms in delivery of education to underserved communities;
• Utilize lead management techniques and maintain a detailed and dynamic database of these key influencer communities while tracking progress of programme launch;

What You Should Have

• Bachelor's degree with superior academic performance;
• Over 4 years’ experience in government program delivery or working in account management or as an engagement manager;
• In depth experience building and systematically managing key complex relationships and accounts to ensure program delivery in a complex, multi-stakeholder program or project;
• Previous experience working with a Ministry of Education or State Education Board on program delivery, preferred; If not within education, experience with another government delivery program or project, such as in health or ICT;
• Confidence, authority, and level-headed decision making needed as program's leadership voice;
• Knowledge of local, state and federal government issues related to the provision of primary education in Nigeria would be preferred;
• Ability to balance commercial interests and social benefits - a blend across business and political acumen, but also high emotional intelligence and relationship-building skills;
• Experience acting as an on-the-record spokesperson;
• Highly capable and thoughtful problem-solving skills; able to act as an intermediary and a solutions driven lead, to ensure effective collaboration and communication between the Government client and our organization;
• Prior experience within a fast-paced, high-growth, metric-driven operational organization will be an advantage;

Working at NewGlobe

Enter the dynamic world of NewGlobe, where we embrace the mindset of boundless potential. 

Here, we excel in innovative problem-solving and harness the power of data to revolutionize education. Committed to scaling our impact, we prioritize inclusivity and design solutions that empower learners worldwide. With relentless determination, we challenge conventions, analyze root causes, and craft inventive solutions to educational challenges. 

Our culture values tangible results, focusing on data-driven decisions and proactive problem-solving. Integrity and accountability are our guiding principles as we uphold commitments, establish policies, and validate our efforts at every turn. 

Through meticulous design, we shape behaviors, championing structured practices, precision, and transparency in our quest for educational excellence. As we journey forward, we embrace challenges and celebrate achievement in our mission to transform education.

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