About this role
JOB DESCRIPTION
JOB TITLE: Junior Software Engineer
REPORTING TO: Senior Engineer/Engineering Manager
DEPARTMENT: Digital Health
CLASSIFICATION LEVEL: Officer
LOCATION: Lusaka, Zambia
ABOUT HEALTHY LEARNERS
Healthy Learners is an award-winning non-profit organisation working to improve the health and learning of children across Zambia—and soon, beyond. In partnership with the Government of Zambia, we bring healthcare directly into schools so that children stay healthy, stay in class, and reach their full potential. Our model is government-owned and government-led, fully embedded in national priorities, systems, and structures.
Today, we have 1,062 health rooms, trained 8,370 School Health Teachers, and operate in 𝟰𝟱 districts across all ten provinces, reaching more than 1.4 million learners through Zambia’s first integrated School Health Program. Our approach combines school-based service delivery with technical assistance to government at every level—strengthening planning, supervision, data use, and local capacity to deliver.
As we complete our national scale-up, we’re focused on deepening programme quality, strengthening delivery systems, and laying the foundation for long-term government leadership. We’re looking for a dynamic operational leader to help drive this next chapter—someone ready to manage complexity at scale and help a proven model achieve lasting impact.
Healthy Learners is the proud recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Innovation, the Duke F.M. Kirby Prize, and the Lipman Family Prize from the University of Pennsylvania. These awards reflect not just our success to date, but the strength of the opportunity ahead. If this mission resonates with you, we’d love to hear from you.
ABOUT YOU
You exemplify the qualities of being Humble, Hungry, and Smart in your leadership:
• Humble (Continuous Learning & Inclusion): You actively seek, encourage, and facilitate feedback sharing, fostering an environment of continuous learning. You adapt and grow continuously, cultivating a culture of inclusion and belonging.
• Hungry (Efficiency, Excellence, and Innovation): Your relentless drive for efficiency and excellence is evident in your approach to both everyday tasks and complex challenges. When obstacles arise, you don't merely seek answers; you develop solutions and establish structures to address future obstacles proactively. Your hunger for innovation permeates the organisation, where you eagerly explore new and best practices, ensuring our people's operations remain modern and highly effective.
• Smart (Emotional Intelligence & Psychological Safety): Your exceptional emotional intelligence is your superpower, allowing you to create psychological safety within the organization. Through your ability to build trust, encourage risk-taking, and nurture courageous conversations, you promote an environment where individuals can thrive and collaborate effectively.
POSITION OVERVIEW
The Junior Software Engineer is to support the development, maintenance, testing, and improvement of digital health systems and data-enabled applications.
The successful candidate will contribute across the software development lifecycle, including requirements gathering, design, development, testing, deployment, documentation, and ongoing support. The role will focus primarily on Python applications, data management, system integrations, and the effective use of third-party developer tools and services.
This is an opportunity for an early-career engineer interested in applying technology to public health, education, and community-based programs. Experience supporting Ministry of Health or Ministry of Education programs will be an advantage.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
• Support the design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance of Healthy Learners’ software applications and digital health platforms.
• Develop, configure, test, deploy, and maintain digital health applications and workflows using low-code platforms such as CommCare.
• Develop and maintain Python applications, backend functionality, services, and APIs.
• Write clean, secure, maintainable, and well-documented code.
• Contribute to frontend, backend, database, and integration tasks as required.
• Troubleshoot application issues, identify root causes, and implement solutions.
• Participate in code reviews and apply feedback from senior engineers.
• Support application upgrades, bug fixes, performance improvements, and routine maintenance.
• Optimize applications for usability, performance, offline-first use and low connectivity environments
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFECYCLE
• Apply a practical understanding of the software development lifecycle.
• Participate in requirements gathering, planning, estimation, implementation, testing, release, and post-release support.
• Translate user and program requirements into technical tasks and solutions.
• Use issue-tracking, version-control, and change-management processes.
• Prepare and maintain technical documentation, release notes, and support materials.
• Support user acceptance testing and resolve defects identified by users or program teams.
DATA MANAGEMENT
• Support the maintenance of application databases, data structures, and data-processing workflows.
• Apply data management best practices, including validation, standardization, deduplication, documentation, secure storage, and access control.
• Assist with data imports, exports, transformations, reconciliation, and routine data-quality checks.
• Maintain data dictionaries, field definitions, database documentation, and data-flow records.
• Identify and report incomplete, inconsistent, duplicated, or inaccurate records.
• Help ensure that child and health-related data is handled securely, confidentially, and in accordance with organizational policies.
• Support the preparation of reliable datasets for reporting, monitoring and evaluation, dashboards, and program decision-making.
• Explore and interrogate datasets to identify patterns, trends, anomalies, and gaps.
• Ask meaningful questions of the data and use exploratory analysis to investigate unexpected results or emerging patterns.
• Investigate discrepancies in data and trace issues back to application logic, workflows, integrations, or data-collection processes.
• Present findings from data exploration in a clear and practical way to support troubleshooting, system improvements, and program decision-making.
THIRD-PARTY TOOLS AND INTEGRATIONS
• Configure, use, and integrate third-party developer tools, APIs, libraries, platforms, and services.
• Assist with tools supporting digital health, data collection, communications, authentication, reporting, and application operations.
• Review and apply technical documentation for external tools and services.
• Support API integrations, data exchanges, authentication processes, and integration troubleshooting.
• Document configurations, dependencies, integration requirements, and support procedures.
COLLABORATION AND SUPPORT
• Work with product, program, monitoring and evaluation, clinical, data, and operations teams.
• Help translate health and education program needs into practical technical solutions.
• Provide technical support to internal users and field teams.
• Participate in demonstrations, training, and user onboarding.
• Communicate technical issues and proposed solutions clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Contribute to a culture of learning, collaboration, quality, and responsible technology use.
SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent qualification in Software Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• Registered with ICTAZ, or able to obtain ICTAZ registration and a valid practising certificate upon appointment.
• 2–4 years of relevant experience in software engineering, application development, data systems, or digital technology.
• Practical experience with Python, its appropriate libraries and relational databases.
• Basic knowledge of the software development lifecycle.
• Experience with Git or another version-control system.
• Experience working with Rest APIs, web services, developer libraries, or third-party software tools.
• Understanding of data quality, privacy, security, and documentation practices.
• Strong problem-solving, communication, teamwork, and organizational skills.
• Willingness to learn new technologies and work under technical guidance.