RFP - Prequalification of Consultants (Agencies/Individuals) Tech and Digital Agency, Software Engineer and UX Designer

What we are looking for

We are at an exciting stage of our tech development: growing our internal tech team, developing relationships with our tech vendors and delivering a range of impactful and dynamic projects for girls at the forefront of the tech-for-good space.

To help us deliver our varied tech portfolio, we are looking to partner with small consultancies, agencies and/or individuals who are interested in working with us as consultants on short-term tech projects when we have a specific opportunity that requires additional technical (software engineering and UX) expertise and/or a level of experience not currently available within our teams. 

We will draw on the support of these consultants to complete both short-term ongoing and/or new projects, delivered in close partnership with Girl Effect’s Technology Team and our tech partners. 

We do not expect one applicant to fulfill all our criteria, but welcome applications from individuals/consultancies/agencies who can help us understand how their experience, knowledge and skills could enable us to progress our tech roadmaps and our thinking.

In return, we can offer you the opportunity to join our tech roster for one year and play a crucial role in creating a better world for girls.

Consultants must be available from April 2023 and able to jump onto projects with a lead time of at most four weeks.

What we value

• Alignment with our mission and commitment to empowering adolescent girls
• An understanding of and (ideally lived) experience in the countries we work in
• Empathy, curiosity and excellent communication skills
• The ability to really listen to our needs and drive to strive for the best tech solution
• A supportive mindset to help our teams and partners develop their skills and knowledge
• Openness and honesty about where we could improve 
• Self-starter partners who can manage their workload

The Scope

As a consulting software engineer, you will:

• Work in a cross-functional, global team environment to help explore and solve the complex problems girls face through lo-fi and hi-fi tech.
• Help our internal teams in the design, development, coding, testing and debugging of our girl-centred Django applications and our chatbots.
• Engage in sprints focussed on (e.g.) building new features, tackling technical debt and code restructuring.

Experience 

• Front-end, back-end or full-stack engineering experience
• Excellent Django and Python web development skills and familiarity with Wagtail 
• Knowledge of Git version control and expertise in git and branch management
• Experience and knowledge of DevOps environments, cloud platforms such as AWS, pipelines and tooling and release management best practices
• Experience working with Agile and Scrum methodologies
• Experience writing clear documentation
• Further education in a Computer Science related discipline
• Ability to quickly understand existing codebases

• Previous contributions to open-source projects

As a consulting UX Designer, you will: 

• Work alongside our UX Lead and internal teams to play a key role in creating and implementing user-focussed solutions that enhance girls’ lives
• Deliver design wireframes, prototypes, user journeys for internal and external stakeholders 
• Leverage a range of inputs, including interaction, brand principles, analytics, customer feedback, usability testing, technology and organisational requirements to develop informed solutions.
• Conduct testing 

Experience

• At least five years of work experience executing and/or leading user experience deliverables (with a portfolio showing outputs, techniques, processes, tools and breadth of knowledge)
• Design execution bringing solutions for responsive web and mobile apps to life
• Experience working with distributed teams (and technological tools that allow for such work)
• Excellent facilitation, presentation communication and interpersonal skills and expertise in running workshops with participants who are remote (including the requisite facilitation techniques and tools)
• A strong awareness of service, product and interaction design
• Willingness to adapt, be flexible and improvise as the situation requires

As a consulting Tech and Digital Agency, you will:

• Provide digital delivery and or/technical project management support to our internal teams
• Track deliverables, deadlines, progress and results 
• Analyse results to improve processes, evolve workflows and address issues

Experience

• A track record of successfully delivering complex technology projects in high-tech environments, ideally within global organisations 
• Strong project management and coaching skills, with experience in Agile and Scrum
• Experience using Jira (or similar SDLC workflow management tools)
• Ability to build relationships with a range of technical and non-technical stakeholders