Job Description

The MEST Incubator is looking for an incubator fellow for a 1 year assignment supporting software startups in Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria. Our Incubator is home to over fifteen (and growing!) funded early stage technology startups, comprised of graduates from our award­winning training program that recruits exceptional talent from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa (meltwater.org/incubator).

The African technology ecosystem is evolving at a blistering pace, and we’re looking for someone who is excited to dive into uncharted waters and help our teams write the playbook on how to build and scale world­class technology companies from Africa.

You’ll be supported by the local team in Africa and San Francisco and report directly to the General Manager of the MEST Incubator.

There are no easy answers to the challenges our founders face, and in many cases, we’ll be looking to you to help our teams define success and work towards that outcome. Are you up for the challenge? Come join us.

THIS IS WHAT YOU'LL BE WORKING ON

Work hands­ on with incubator companies which may require additional technical support. This may involve driving development activities and training team members.

Offer technical advice to incubator companies,which may include recommendations regarding frameworks and libraries, suggestions on how to solve a particular problem or simply helping out to debug an issue.

Designing optimal interfaces with principles of user experience.

Recommend and implement good software engineering practices,which may

include setting up version control, automated build systems, IDE's, bug tracking

and suggesting code conventions.

Assist teams increating technical road maps and prioritizing tasks.

Assist with technical hiring and developer recruitment.

Resolve support requests and handle system administration tasks for the

computer network in the incubator.

Teach occasional classes and conduct workshops related to various

technologies.

1. MEST MAKING WAVES & HEADLINES

• ● MEST entrepreneurs have developed solutions addressing local & global markets, received outside follow­on funding from global investors, and have gained admittance to top accelerator programs such as Y­Combinator, 500 Startups and TechStars.
• ● MEST entrepreneurs have also been selected by President Obama to represent at the U.S.­Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C. and have also been named Mandela Washington Fellows, a flagship program of Obama’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).
• ● MEST itself is regarded as “one of the largest private investments in Ghanaian economic development” by DFID and has received recognition from Forbes, AlJazeera, CNN, TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, BBC, and MarketWatch. MEST was also recently recognized as Fast Company’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Africa.
• ● Corporate strategic partners include the likes of SAP, Samsung, Vodafone and Facebook’s internet.org — all of which have a shared interest in

bolstering the emerging tech ecosystem in Africa as means to economic growth.

About the company

Established in Ghana in 2008, MEST offers aspiring African entrepreneurs a fully sponsored a twelve month, intensive full­time program. Sourced from top graduates in Ghana, Nigeria & Kenya, 30+ of these Entrepreneurs­In­Training (EITs) are selected each year and receive comprehensive training across the spectrum of skills required to build successful tech businesses, including computer programming, software development, product management, finance, marketing, sales and leadership best practices.

After completion of the program, the EITs have the opportunity to pitch a concept. Winning teams receive a seed round from the MEST incubator to pursue their idea.

With experience in project management. Experience in managing a team of developers is a huge plus. Below is a list of skills an ideal candidate would possess. You don’t have to be an expert at everything listed below, but should have a good idea of how these technologies work. You should be able to quickly familiarize yourself with new technologies and apply them in practice, and you should be constantly looking for ways to improve the development process of our incubator companies.

• Agile software development and project management
• Web development using modern web frameworks, like Laravel, RoR, Django
• Front­end development (Frameworks like AngularJS, emberJS or knockoutJS

are a plus)

• Mobile app development (especially iOS and Android)
• Web design using CSS3 and HTML5 (Experience with pre­processors like Sass,

Less, Haml, Jade is a plus)

• Server management using PaaSs and IaaSs, like Heroku and AWS

Database management (SQL databases like PostgresQL and NoSQL database

like MongoDB)

NICE TO HAVE

While not strictly required, we’d be particularly excited if you:

• Have an enviable rolodex of warm relationships at numerous companies
• Are familiar with or have a very active interest in how technology

entrepreneurship is evolving in Africa or other fast moving emerging markets.

• Have a background in product management, digital marketing or sales
• Have experience in the following spaces: consumer mobile apps, ecommerce

platforms, agriculture