Vacancy Announcements
Closing Friday, September 15, 2017
Senior Health Information Systems Officer
(Software Developer)
Background
The University of California San Francisco (USCF) supports several public health programmes in Kenya. These include support to a monitoring database for the DREAMS programme, support to case-based surveillance and various other types of databases and health information systems.
UCSF is recruiting a Senior HIS Developer through our affiliated international NGO Global Programs for Research & Training to support these activities.
The basic objective of this position is to support UCSF with its data needs by developing databases, dashboards, apps and other software to support its projects and programmes. The Senior HIS Developer is expected to design databases to meet the needs for specific projects. Project requirements will vary to include the design of data entry screens for these databases, import of data from existing data sources into a UCSF-managed database, sometimes with data transformations. Therefore, an understanding of SQL is critical. Majority of the projects will require the data to be disclosed via dashboards – often with some transformation or analysis of that data before it is displayed. For example, data that originates from a single health facility may need to be aggregated into a ward, sub-county, county or national view on the dashboard. Visualising data on dashboards will be a critical competency for the developer to have.
Additional software development needs may arise occasionally, such as the development of mobile apps or interoperability layers between existing systems. As an integral part of the UCSF Global Programs team, and the lead HIS Officer in Kenya, the Senior HIS Developer will be expected to meet with stakeholders, funders and government officials, to discuss technical requirements and system specifications, and present progress on deliverables. In all of these activities, the Senior HIS Developer will liaise closely with the Senior Manager for Global Health Informatics who is based in San Francisco, as well as the UCSF Kenya-based Director of Strategic Information and various Technical Advisors and Programme Managers. The incumbent will oversee a small team of Nairobi-based software developers and allocate time and resources as appropriate based on needs and requirements. An understanding of popular tools currently in the health sector such as ODK, DHIS2 and OpenMRS is considered an advantage.
Specific Roles and Responsibilities
- Coordinate, prioritize and distribute informatics activities between various informatics hub team members
- Keep track of progress, organize weekly meetings to prioritize the work
- Promote collaboration with other members of the informatics hub (outside of Kenya), where appropriate
- Primary in-country liaison for the San Francisco-based health informatics team
- Collaborate with the UCSF team, stakeholders, government and donors to establish needs and requirements for any database or information system.
- In collaboration with others, determine the appropriate frameworks, tools and technologies to be used for implementing any database or information system, taking context, existing capacity and other guiding principles e.g. open source, already in use in the health sector, into account.
- Based on agreed specifications, oversee and contribute to the design, development and maintenance of SQL-based databases, primarily using open source tools such as MySQL and PostgreSQL; web-based dashboards and other websites, including web apps that summarize, display, visualize data and make datasets available for download and further analysis; and Android-based apps.
- Oversee and contribute to the development of output reports using popular reporting tools such as Jasper Reports that pre-analyze and visualize data, and allow other people to pull those reports online through a website/dashboard)
- Develop interfaces for interoperability to enable data syncing between databases
- Contribute to the development of SOPs, and subsequently implement and enforcement SOPs
- Collaborate and support team members in meeting expected outcomes
Qualifications and Experience
- An appropriate degree in computer science, information systems or software engineering with a focus on software development or equivalent degree.
- At least seven years of experience in developing information systems, ideally with a focus on health information systems, in popular languages such as JAVA, PHP or Python. Open-source languages are highly preferable. JAVA experience is required.
- At least 5 years of experience of working in the health sector in a public health discipline, such as epidemiology, biostatistics or M&E
- Demonstrable experience of at least 3 years working with databases and SQL, including writing SQL queries
- Working experience with software development and maintenance tools like Spring, Hibernate, jQuery, Subversion, Git, Restful web services, Agile methodology, Jasper server, Android SDK
How to apply:
To Apply
Qualified Kenyan nationals are encouraged to apply.
All applicants must address each selection criterion detailed in the minimum requirements above with specific and comprehensive information supporting each item.
All applications must include the following:
- Cover letter
- Current CV with names, email addresses and telephone numbers for three referees
- Salary history
Applications must be sent by email to [email protected] with the email subject Senior HIS Developer by Friday, September 15, 2017.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. list:l1
More Information
- Job City Nairobi
