Full Stack Engineer

Founding Full-Stack Engineer & Partner (Django + React)

Company: Skul-Data — School Data Management & Operations Platform

Location: Kenya-first, remote-friendly (EAT)

Compensation: Partnership with fixed equity share (to be discussed further)

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About Skul-Data

Skul-Data is a school database management and operations platform for small to mid-sized schools in Kenya. We centralize school data and automate workflows across students, parents, teachers, classes, timetables, exams, fees, documents, and analytics—while giving school owners auditability and real-time visibility.

Mission:
 To empower small and medium-sized educational institutions across Kenya with intelligent, affordable, and intuitive data management and automation solutions that streamline operations, enhance communication, and promote academic excellence through real-time insights and smart automation.

Vision:
 To become the leading digital transformation partner and data management platform for educational institutions across Africa, enabling every institution — regardless of size or resources — to thrive in the digital age by simplifying administration, fostering connected learning communities, and driving progress through accessible technology and smart automation.

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What you'll own

You'll lead and own the entire web app: backend and frontend architecture, implementation, bug fixing, testing, release, and ongoing iteration. This is not a contractor role — this is a partner-level position where your decisions will directly shape the product and company.

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Current product surface

Backend (Django / DRF)

• Modular apps: users, documents, reports, students, analytics, action_logs, scheduler (calendar), schools, notifications, fee_management, exams, kcse.
• Role-based access control with dynamic permissions.
• Parent–teacher–student relationships and report generation (academic now, extensible).
• Documents I/O (PDF, Excel, CSV), audit trail, scalable APIs, WebSocket routing per module.

Frontend (React / Vite)

• Modular dashboards for Admin, Teacher, and Parent roles.
• Real-time messaging & notifications (WebSockets).
• Context-aware state (Context API); integrated with DRF via Axios.
• Dynamic role & permission UI; secure login and token-based sessions (JWT).
• Docs upload/download (PDF/Excel/CSV).
• Analytics dashboard (KPI stat cards, charts including radar).
• Class tools (timetables, attendance), calendar scheduler, action logs.
• Fee Management (structures, invoices, payments, reminders).
• Exam Management (grading, scheduling, results, reports); KCSE analytics integrated under exams.

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Tech stack

Backend: Django 4.x, Django REST Framework, Django Channels + Redis (WebSockets), Celery + Redis (tasks), PostgreSQL, JWT auth (SimpleJWT), Python 3.10+.

Frontend: React (Vite), JavaScript (ES6+), React Router, Context API, Axios, CSS Modules (+ component stylesheets).

Infra/Dev: GitHub, Docker (preferred), simple CI/CD, environment secrets management.

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Your responsibilities

As our founding engineer, you will:

• Extend and complete dashboards: Expand the school owner (primary admin) dashboard and set up the corresponding teacher and parent dashboards.
• Fix existing issues: Investigate and resolve bugs where certain tabs/files aren't properly reflecting API data, ensuring data consistency across the project.
• Authentication & sessions: Finalize secure login/logout, session handling, and token refresh logic (JWT).
• Simplify and polish the UI: Redesign and refine the interface to keep it simple, intuitive, and accessible while retaining full functionality. Every user — admin, teacher, parent, student — should feel the system is easy to use.
• Own architecture & delivery: Continue building scalable backend and frontend features across all school modules.
• Database management: Design clean PostgreSQL schemas, migrations, and ensure data accuracy across modules.
• Real-time functionality: Maintain and extend WebSocket-based features for notifications, messaging, and events.
• Testing & stability: Write and maintain backend and frontend tests; improve logging and error handling.
• Documentation: Maintain developer and user documentation as the product grows.
• Collaborate on roadmap, scope milestones, and help recruit the next engineering hires.

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Must-haves

• 1+ years
   building and shipping 
  Django + DRF
   and 
  React
   products (or equivalent depth).
• Strong 
  PostgreSQL
   skills: schema design, indexing, query optimization.
• Real-time
   experience (Django Channels/WebSockets) and 
  background jobs
   (Celery).
• Solid 
  frontend engineering
  : React Router, state patterns (Context or Redux), Axios, 
  responsive CSS
   (you're comfortable with CSS Modules and component-level styles).
• Pragmatic 
  testing
   mindset; you've shipped with unit/integration tests.
• Security basics: auth flows, permissions, OWASP, input validation, file upload hygiene.
• Clear communication and product sense; comfortable owning outcomes.
• A strong 
  problem-solver mindset
  : comfortable debugging data mismatches and complex logic issues.

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Nice-to-haves

• Docker, and CI/CD workflows like GitHub Actions.
• Data visualization skills (charts, dashboards, analytics).
• Experience with Kenyan/East African ed-tech or payments (M-Pesa integrations down the road), and email mailing and sms system integration

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What success looks like (first 60 days)

• Fix & stabilize: Resolve current data reflection issues across dashboard tabs.
• Ship dashboards: Deliver complete, role-based dashboards (Admin, Teacher, Parent).
• Strengthen authentication: Ensure secure and reliable JWT login/logout flows.
• Refine UI: Simplify and polish key flows to be easy for school admins, teachers, and parents.
• Extend modules: Advanced reports(report forms and transcripts for students), documents, analytics, timetables, exams, and fee management.