Senior Software Engineer
Overview
GiveDirectly is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help build the systems that deliver cash grants directly to the world’s poorest.
Job Description
GiveDirectly (GD) aims to reshape international giving by providing cash grants directly to the world’s poorest. GD has raised over $1B since launching in 2011, delivered cash to more than 1.5 million people in 15 different countries. Our culture is candid, analytical, agile, and non-hierarchical.
Responsibilities
- - Design and build scalable, reliable systems that power our core operations
- - Own end-to-end development of new features and services, from architecture through deployment and monitoring
- - Improve our developer workflows by strengthening CI/CD pipelines, reducing manual steps, and increasing test coverage
- - Collaborate with cross-functional teams (product, ops, data) to understand real-world needs and ship tools that directly support program delivery in the field
- - Debug and resolve production issues across our stack, with a focus on root cause analysis and long-term fixes
- - Advocate for sustainable engineering practices, including testing, documentation, and monitoring
- - Help shape our tech roadmap with an eye toward scale, maintainability, and recipient experience
Required Skills
- - Exceptional alignment with GiveDirectly Values and active demonstration of our core competencies: emotional intelligence, problem solving, project management, follow-through, and fostering inclusivity
- - 4+ years of industry experience creating production-caliber software and systems
- - Experience with backend architecture: databases, cloud services, APIs
- - Experience building infrastructure to deploy software
- - Experience with strongly-typed, object-oriented programming such as Java, C#, Go, etc. and scripting languages such as Python, Ruby, etc.
- - High degree of ownership and autonomy
- - Strong analytical skills and communication
- - Bonus: Experience using Python and AWS in a production environment
- - Bonus: experience with payments/financial software and/or experience with microservice/serverless architecture
Benefits
- - A positive and supportive team with opportunities for advancement
- - A demonstrated commitment to helping all staff develop and grow
- - A competitive salary, including bonus
- - A robust health benefits plan (exact details will vary by country)
- - Unlimited PTO (that we encourage staff to take!)
- - Desk allowance and flexible work location
About the company
GiveDirectly is a nonprofit organization that helps people living in extreme poverty by delivering unconditional cash transfers directly to recipients via mobile payments. Operating across countries including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Bangladesh, the DRC, and the United States, GiveDirectly enables governments, foundations, and individual donors to move resources efficiently and transparently to those who need them most. By using technology to identify recipients, deliver payments end-to-end, and rigorously measure impact through randomized controlled trials, GiveDirectly is reshaping international development—putting choice and agency in the hands of recipients while building one of the most scalable, evidence-driven models in global aid.
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