AI Chatbot – Tech Lead (with Python/JS)

1.Background

DIGITAL UMUGANDA is Artificial intelligence and open data company currently focusing on AI Natural Language Processing (NLP) to democratize access to information and services hence reducing the digital divide gap. This is done by being a platform for international commons initiatives such as Common voice linking global efforts to local communities and contexts as well as developing solutions that enable this mission. Digital Umuganda projects align with the national digital smart master plans with a focus on projects with a sustainable development impact.

Projects

Mbaza AI Chatbot

In collaboration with its partners and consortium members, Digital Umuganda presented the solution of an AI-powered chatbot to ease information and knowledge dissemination on COVID-19 in Rwanda at the #SmartDevelopmentHack, an international hackathon organized by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). This solution was selected as one of 9 winning solutions of the hackathon.  The chatbot will enable Rwandans to ask individual questions regarding COVID-19 and receive verified reliable answers 24/7 from anywhere. The solution will build on existing COVID-19 information systems operating in Rwanda, including a COVID-19 call center run by the Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) and a USSD chatbot to conduct self-screening. The chatbot will be developed over 5 iterations – from a simple rule-based text chatbot to a contextual voice-based chatbot in Kinyarwanda. In a sixth iteration, the chatbot will be scaled to Kenya to also operate in Kiswahili.

Open voice datasets

Digital Umuganda’s is building open datasets and NLP solutions. To this end Digital Umuganda has been building anOpen Kinyarwanda Voice Dataset is an initiative to build freely publicly available speech to text data in Kinyarwanda. Digital Umuganda in collaboration with the GIZ, Mozilla & Government institutions built a dataset of over 1,200 hours and 1,200,000 sentences through crowd-sourcing. The initiative worked with voluntary contributors from local universities as well as the general public donating sentences and voices under Creative Commons 0 License. The objective is to give innovators, researchers and developers access to a key infrastructure to develop voice technology in Kinyarwanda. The end goal is to reduce barriers to access information and services and build inclusive digital solutions that can be accessed by marginalized communities especially in areas with low literacy levels as well as people living with disabilities.

2.Tasks to be performed by the  Tech Lead 

Against this background, Digital Umuganda is seeking to hire a Tech Lead with the following tasks:

1. The Tech Lead will be responsible for managing a team of 7 technical staff members.
2. The Tech Lead will be responsible for managing all technical aspects of Digital Umuganda projects, especially the Mbaza AI project. He/she will ensure the success of delivered solutions in the planned timelines.
3. The Tech Lead will plan, design, lead and execute technical solutions development and improvements.
4. The Tech lead will promote collaboration within the team and with external project stakeholders.
5. The Tech Lead will be responsible for system architecture focusing on the entire cycle of the system.
6. The Tech lead will mentor team members in specific languages, technologies, frameworks, data storage, libraries, monitoring as well as soft skills including leadership.
7. The Tech Lead will be responsible for guiding and improving processes and software development methodologies.
8.  The Tech Lead will be responsible for implementing best practices and coding standards in projects.
9. The Tech lead will work on constantly increasing the productivity of the team and reducing the waste on the other end.
10. The Tech Lead will be responsible for overall technical team management including service level indicators, communication, split of work, code review policies, retrospectives, and achievement of internal milestones.

 3. Required qualifications, competences, and experience

You are excited about AI and Natural Language Processing software that allows machines to understand the unstructured text. You have programming experience in several programming languages and you have a good understanding of the machine learning (ML) foundations. You are good at finding solutions or workarounds when the obvious is not in sight.

Requirements:

• Experienced developer in either Python or JS. At least 5 years of production experience in developing mid to large applications
• Good understanding of the development principles and practices (SOLID, DRY, XP, Agile)
• Practical experience in professional software development, including deployment and rollout strategies, software quality assurance, and software configuration management
• Comfortable and experienced with most of the following: Linux, python, docker, mysql, Postgres
• Knowledgeable in web application security & performance
• Knowledgeable in database performance aspects
• DevOps savvy
• Experience in analyzing and communicating technical material and concepts
• Ability to understand/read an architecture
• Familiarity with machine learning concepts
• Good communication skills
• Professional proficiency in English

Other knowledge, additional competences

• Strong skills in project management
• Curious and quick learner
• Creative, open-minded, and quality-focused