Code for Africa (CfA) uses technology and #OpenData to empower citizens. We give citizens actionable information for better-informed decision making and digital tools to amplify their voices, so that they can hold the authorities (both governmental and corporate) to account.
About the Role
The AI Engineer role sits within the TechLab. You will collaborate with a distributed, multidisciplinary team of engineers, designers, data journalists, and product managers. You will also engage directly with external partners ranging from investigative newsrooms to human rights defenders. CfA takes a pragmatic, portfolio approach to the AI landscape. Open-source models such as Mistral, Qwen, Gemma and others sit at the core of our infrastructure where data sovereignty and auditability matter most. But we also engage with leading AI labs through their nonprofit programmes, when frontier capability serves a specific need. Part of this role is maintaining the relationships and technical fluency to move across that landscape intelligently.
One of your early priorities will be leading the technical architecture of our AI Innovation Sandbox, a self-contained ecosystem that gives civil society organisations access to this full range of AI infrastructure and tooling. This is a flagship initiative, but it is one of many: you will be expected to identify, shape, and lead AI work across the full breadth of CfA’s portfolio as the field evolves.
Responsibilities
- Navigate the AI model landscape: Make and maintain principled decisions about when to use open-source models, when to leverage frontier models through nonprofit partnerships, and how to architect systems that avoid lock-in either way. Cultivate relationships with leading AI labs such as Anthropic, OpenAI, and others.
- Engineer context, not just prompts: Design the full context that makes models useful: system instructions, retrieval strategies, memory architecture, tool outputs, and structured reasoning chains (RAG). Create domain-specific AI assistants grounded in curated, high-quality knowledge bases.
- Design and run evals: Build evaluation frameworks to measurably ensure AI systems work as intended. Identify failure modes proactively, particularly in African linguistic and cultural contexts.
- Build agent systems that do real work: Design and develop AI agents capable of planning, executing multi-step tasks, using external tools and APIs, and operating with appropriate degrees of autonomy.
- Build and ship AI-powered products: Own the full cycle from prototype to production for AI features across CfA’s platforms, including versioning, output testing, and edge case handling.
- Drive responsible AI practice: Embed bias detection, ethical review, and human rights considerations into deployments. Represent CfA’s AI thinking externally in publications and conferences.
- Build capability across the organisation and beyond: Grow internal AI literacy and support partner organisations like newsrooms and civil society groups through technical guidance.
Requirements
- 4+ years building and shipping software, with meaningful hands-on experience building AI-powered products or systems.
- Fluency in Python and TypeScript.
- Demonstrated experience designing and building agentic AI systems (multi-step tasks, tool use, memory, planning, error recovery).
- Strong context engineering instincts and information architecture knowledge.
- A systematic approach to evaluations (designing for measurability).
- Familiarity with the broader AI ecosystem (open-source tooling and commercial APIs).
- Strong system design instincts regarding AI latency, fallbacks, cost, and reliability.
- Sound judgement on responsible AI: bias, fairness, transparency, and ethics.
- Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
- Fluency in English.
- A degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent portfolio experience).
Preferred Skills and Experience
- Experience deploying open-source LLMs in production environments.
- Experience with AI lab nonprofit programmes (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google.org).
- Familiarity with vector databases, embedding models, and knowledge graphs.
- Experience with multimodal AI systems.
- Background in containerisation and cloud infrastructure (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Experience in civic technology, journalism, or human rights contexts.
- Experience with multilingual NLP for African languages.
- Fluency in French, Arabic, or KiSwahili.
Location and Language
- Location: Fully remote — open to candidates anywhere in the world, with a preference for those based in Africa.
- Language: English is required; French, Arabic, or KiSwahili is a significant advantage.
How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should apply online via the Code for Africa application page. Please visit https://www.myjobmag.co.ke/apply-now/1210112 to submit your application.
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