Zoo Station

This is a great opportunity for the techies among you who are interested in building ICTD solutions, especially in the micro-finance domain. If you need any clarifications, please let me know.

Mifos Software Development Manager
Location: Seattle (working remotely from Bay Area an option)
Start date: Immediate

Grameen Foundation USA (http://www.gfusa.org/) is a global non-profit organization that combines microfinance, new technologies, and innovation to empower the world's poorest people to escape poverty. Founded in 1997, GFUSA’s global network includes 50 partners in 20 countries. GFUSA’s Technology Center is the process of developing Microfinance Open Source (MIFOS) to launch in late 2006. A global, industry-wide initiative, Mifos is a unique management information software system designed for MFIs. Mifos will capitalize on the open source model to provide MFIs unprecedented flexibility and opportunity to scale their operations in order to serve more of the world’s poorest individuals.

To catalyze development of this product, GFUSA has contracted a development firm to develop a first release. We are looking for a seasoned software professional with proven experience shipping software, developing well-architected systems, and managing development teams to oversee the continuation of this development effort. Post release, this position will manage a team of open-source volunteers to drive ongoing support and development of the product.

Essential Job Functions:

* Oversees outsourcing development effort to ensure high standards of technical architecture and code

o Technical Design: Oversees volunteer community to conduct reviews of technical design, identify issues, and drive to resolution.
o Code Review: Conducts code reviews and manages/collates volunteer code reviews to ensure coding guidelines are being followed.
o QA Acceptance: Defines strategy & resources for validating that off-shore team has delivered on functional & performance requirements. Manages V1 validation and testing process.

* Drives technical architecture of product

o Drives ongoing technical architecture and technical specification for product. Works to collect input from advisors and volunteers and drives consensus around architecture. Analyzes long term requirements, identifies options for technical architecture, builds out long term architecture strategy.
* Defines and drives open-source development process
o Defines process and structure required for managing open source development effort and product releases including development and validation of: functional requirements, technical design, coding, build processes, testing, and release.
o Develops communication plans & processes for fostering and managing the open-source contributing team.
o Works with PM to define schedule and functionality for ongoing product enhancements.
o Works to develop a product support and bug fixing process.

* Manages Developer Platform & Technical Documentation

o Builds and maintains developer center portal to manage contributions, bug tracking, code checkins and issue tracking. Drives use of bugzilla, CVS, wiki, and other sourceforge.net tools to facilitate community involvement.
o Drives documentation of technical decisions and direction to facilitate engagement of volunteer community.

Requirements and Skills:

* Strong program and project management skills. 6-8 years professional software engineering experience with proven track record of on-time delivery of complex products including the ability to effectively communicate priorities, delivery expectations, risks and concerns to multiple stakeholders.
* Experience managing geographically disbursed teams and working with offshore development teams preferred. Experience working on or managing open source projects highly desired.
* Superb technical software and architecture skills. 3 years of experience with Java/J2EE (preferably) or C++ enterprise applications. Experience with Struts, Hibernate and MVC design pattern highly desired. Exposure to Test Driven Development highly desired. Minimum of 5 years experience with OO programming.
* Passion for documentation.
* Excellent leadership and communication skills. Able to inspire confidence and trust in a geographically and culturally diverse group of contributors.
* Experience with accounting systems, banking processes, microfinance methodologies and operations highly desired
* Exposure to low bandwidth environments, rural development countries helpful.
* Willingness to travel internationally 4 times/year for 3 weeks at a time.
* Fluency in English an absolute requirement.

How to Apply:
Submit cover letter and resume in one document by e-mail to: Emily Tucker, Grameen Foundation USA, etucker@gfusa.org