Principal Software Engineer

Job Description

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

• OpenFn is a public service automation platform, available to all as an open-source digital public good. Governments and NGOs use it to connect together complex systems—civic registries, microservices, AI tools, and more—into reliable workflows.
• Our team, Open Function Group, builds the OpenFn software platform and deploys it with partners worldwide, in 40+ countries and counting. We are a small, fully-remote, and mission-driven outfit backed exclusively by philanthropic capital.
• We deeply believe that everyone deserves brilliant digital services from their government. We think that AI offers an historic opportunity to realise this vision. That's why we're building OpenFn.

What you’ll be doing

Build the "Claude Code for Public Services". As a Principal Engineer you'll own features end-to-end across the whole stack: helping users wire up data sources into workflows, chat with AI agents to test their services against complex edge cases, spot anomalous behaviour at a glance in dynamic dashboards, and debug failing workflows in real time.

Write the pattern book. Set the technical vision for our UI architecture — state management, component patterns, build tooling, design system — and make the decisions that allow us to rapidly test new ideas and scale the ones that work. You'll partner closely with product and design to shape what gets built, not just how.

Raise the bar. You'll be the technical leader other engineers learn from. Set high standards through code review, architectural guidance, and your own work. Model what infrastructure-grade craft looks like in practice — the kind of engineering that governments can depend on.

Requirements

What you'll bring

• 7+ years of engineering experience, with deep expertise in Javascript
• You've shaped the architecture of a complex, multi-user platform and lived with the results
• Strong technical problem-solving — you instinctively see the underlying issues creating surface-level noise and chart a path to resolving them.
• Experience building rich, interactive UIs — canvas editors, streaming interfaces, real-time collaboration, or similarly complex front-end work
• Comfort with the full stack adjacent: APIs, WebSockets, build tooling, CI/CD, and testing strategies
• Excellent communication skills for remote-first work using GitHub, Slack, and Figma
• Fluency in English

Even better

• Experience building or evolving a design system in code — tokens, component libraries, and patterns that other engineers actually use
• Experience building AI-powered UIs — streaming chat, inline code generation, agentic tool interfaces
• Experience with both component-driven and MVC approaches such as Phoenix LiveView
• Experience with developer tools, code editors, or CLI-adjacent web experiences
• Background in open-source, international development, or the civil service
• Second language proficiency

Benefits

Compensation

• Competitive, commensurate with experience
• Fully remote with regular meetups across Europe and Africa
• Leadership development and strategic influence in a small, mission-driven team
• The opportunity to impact millions of lives through open-source software