Back Support Officer (Linux Engineer)

Title: Support Officer (Linux Engineer)

Project: Instant Network Schools

Organisation: Vodafone Foundation

Location: Bordeaux, France or remote from one of the 6 INS countries

General Background:

“Connectivity is transforming the world. However, those who have the most to gain are often the last to benefit. The Vodafone Foundation is dedicated to deploying connectivity and technology to deliver long term, sustainable benefits for vulnerable communities around the world.” Lisa Felton, Director, Vodafone Foundation

Refugee classrooms are perhaps the toughest in the world. Throughout Africa, teachers are routinely working in under-resourced classrooms, trying to meet the needs of a large number of mixed-age and mixed-ability learners. Fostering quality learning in these environments remains a constant challenge for even the most talented teachers. This is especially difficult when teachers do not have access to dynamic or updated educational resources.

Vodafone Foundation won the Transformational Solutions in Education, Knowledge and Skills award for the INS programme, at the Financial Times/International Finance Corporation Transformational and Business Conference Awards 2020.

We believe that education is key to the future of our Planet and humankind.

We believe that every girl and boy should have access to quality education regardless of the country of origin or whether they can afford to pay.

We support inclusive approaches for refugee and forcibly displaced children, particularly in developing countries who host the majority of refugees globally.

We support addressing gender based digital divides and increasing access for girls to education.

We believe that technology can be transformational in empowering teachers and parents to educate children in and out-of-school and can contribute to protecting them.

We believe tech is a tool to serve humans and that holistic approaches such as INS are the solution.

Since 2014, Vodafone Foundation and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) have partnered to deploy the Instant Network Schools (INS) programme. The Instant Network Schools (INS) programme aims to create a conducive teaching and learning environment which should include:

• A quality learning environment within a safe building/classroom, sufficient furniture, lighting and fans and safe storage for INS equipment.
• Adequate human resources to run lessons including a Coach (additional staff or referent given sufficient time to support teachers in lesson delivery)
• Reliable power, ideally from renewable/sustainable sources
• Reliable uncapped connectivity (or minimum data allowance of 500GB/month) with minimum speeds of 10 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up.
• Network infrastructure to support offline and online educational content distribution and online content filtering to promote a safe learning environment for teachers, students and members of the community. Including hardware, software and cloud solutions.
• Content creation, lesson management and delivery tools for teachers
• Digital courses to raise awareness on online safety, online search and privacy and empower teachers to leverage technology in the classroom.
• Devices to support educational activities (lessons or extracurricular): laptop(s), tablets, video/audio and charging stations stored safely.
• In-country and remote support structures to provide preventive and reactive maintenance.

As of March 2024, the INS programme has expanded to 126 centres across 6 African countries reaching over 274,000 students and 7,400 teachers and can count on the support of 100 Vodafone employee volunteers globally.

Support Officer (Linux engineer) position overview

You will be part of the core INS team. You will be part of a cross-functional team from Vodafone Foundation and UNHCR, will report directly to the INS Programme Lead and work closely with the DevOps officer. You will focus on support activities but may be called upon to assist with front end development, back end development, software testing, automation and Linux administration. You will work remotely, working with a global team (primarily operating in the Europe/London and Europe/Paris time zones). You will preferably be based either in the Bordeaux region (France) or in one of the 6 INS countries (DRC, Egypt, Kenya, Mozambique, Tanzania, South Sudan).

We are a small team, so there is an opportunity to be involved in many areas of software and hardware development, deployment, support and administration. You will likely travel to INS countries to support field activities.

This position is a full-time or part-time (4 days per week, Monday to Thursday) consultant role. It is currently advertised for the April 2024 to March 2025 period with an opportunity to expand contract duration.

Roles and responsibilities

• Responsible for overall maintenance and support of all INS operation globally
• Troubleshoot issues and answer queries on INS from the in-country INS teams
• Manage and update tickets in the help-desk system
• Build and maintain knowledge base and training documents for INS systems
• Train in-country INS teams on new features and releases of INS
• Train and update INS volunteers on new features and releases of INS
• Oversee spares stock in country and at the UK Hub Office
• Test new releases of INS systems and software

Essential Minimum Qualifications and Experience

• University degree or equivalent experience in a Computing/Networking/Data science related field
• Minimum 2 years working experience in Computing, Networking or Data science.
• Demonstrated experience and skills in presential and online delivery of training for adults
• Familiarity with Linux server administration (preferably Red Hat family distributions)
• Familiarity with Ansible or a willingness to learn
• Knowledge of hardware troubleshooting and maintenance
• Excellent teamwork and problem-solving skills
• Ability to travel (approx. 2 weeks every 3 months on average)
• Fluency in English (spoken and written)

Desirable Qualifications & Competencies

• Knowledge/understanding of educational technology
• Knowledge of AWS EC2 management
• Familiarity with front end web development/design
• Familiarity with Elasticsearch/Kibana and using data to drive decisions
• Excellent project management and ability to prioritise
• Good listener and passion for sharing knowledge and build capacity of others
• Beneficial languages: French, Arabic, Portuguese and/or Swahili