Director of Engineering, Implementation

Type : Full-time contractor (hours negotiable)
Location : Remote - Africa/Europe time zones (strong preference for candidates based in Africa)

OpenFn is the digital public good for public service automation & AI orchestration. Our platform automates data exchange and digital workflows so that governments and NGOs can deliver public services more efficiently, achieve interoperability across fragmented systems, and scale critical public services across health, humanitarian, and government programs.

Our team, Open Function Group , the primary steward of this open-source platform, is a lean, fully-remote team of integration specialists, solution architects, and implementation consultants working across 40+ countries.

We are not making marginal improvements to already comfortable lives. We are building the infrastructure that allows governments to function, clinics to operate, and vulnerable populations to access services they depend on. The solutions you design and help deliver will shape whether a ministry can reach its citizens, whether a health system can act on its own data, and whether a government can adopt AI responsibly and on its own terms.

The role

We are hiring a Director of Engineering for our Services team to own solution quality, technical strategy, and engineering delivery across OpenFn's implementation portfolio , taking responsibility for technical decisions from pre-sales conversations with prospective customers to implementation with government clients and final project handover.

This role sits at the intersection of enterprise architecture, integration design, software engineering, and implementation leadership. You will be the person who learns the OpenFn platform inside and out, its capabilities, its limits, and how to apply it well, and you will use that knowledge to guide internal and external implementation teams delivering workflow automation and interoperability solutions for government ministries, health systems, and large NGOs.

You will be the go-to technical expert for our software engineers and consultants when technical challenges arise in integration pipelines, local deployments, or solution design. You bridge knowledge gaps, resolve problems, and mentor the team in their work, bringing the engineering expertise, architectural judgment, and platform knowledge (we’ll teach you!) to move things forward with confidence. You establish best practice in code quality, working methods, and engineering approach.

Think of it as a hybrid of internal CTO, platform authority, solution architect, and technical quality lead for the services side of the business, which implements the OpenFn Digital Public Good for government and NGO customers in countries all over the world. You are not expected to own core product engineering, though you'll influence it heavily through the feedback loop described below. You are expected to ensure that every solution the Services team designs and ships is architecturally sound, fit-for-purpose, and built last. You will manage and mentor a global team of engineers, build lasting technical capacity in country IT teams, and help shape an open source project used in 40+ countries.

As a director-level hire, you will also help build the institutional knowledge that makes the whole team stronger over time: establishing architecture patterns and engineering best practices, defining what quality looks like, providing critical feedback to the core product and roadmap, and creating the resources that help OpenFn scale its implementation work without scaling its complexity.

What you’ll be doing

You will collaborate with technical teams, implementation partners, and government clients to design and develop data integration and workflow automation solutions that automate public services, orchestrate and safely leverage AI services, and enable smarter, more connected digital systems. Leveraging your expertise in software architecture, systems integration, deployment strategies, and modern development practices, you will deliver solutions that meet project scope, cost, and timeline requirements — and help governments transform their digital systems to deliver better public services.

Solution Architecture and Design Leadership

• Own technical architecture across the services portfolio, from pre-contract scoping through delivery
• Lead solution design for OpenFn-centered interoperability engagements: integration strategy, data flow architecture, API design patterns, system topology, and deployment approach
• Consult directly with government and NGO technical counterparts on OpenFn solution design and associated enterprise architecture strategy
• Evaluate proposed use cases to determine whether they are a strong fit for the OpenFn platform; advise on constraints and alternative designs
• Vet proposed solutions against clear technical criteria, including scalability, efficiency, data volume, and appropriate engineering scope, so designs are neither over- nor …