Frontend and QA Engineer, Contractor

About Acumen Academy
Acumen Academy is the world’s school for social change. We offer off and online courses in how to make social change happen. We aim to unleash a new generation of social innovators and leaders with the determination and grit to build a more just, inclusive and sustainable world. We offer anyone with an internet connection, anywhere in the world, access to the practical tools, practices, resources and supportive community they need to achieve positive social change. With 700 Fellows and 500,000 course takers in 193 countries, the Acumen Academy community represents a new generation of social innovators and leaders committed to doing what’s right in a world that loves easy.
Where You Come In
Acumen Academy is looking for an experienced React developer with an honest passion for CSS, cross-browser compatibility, and smart unit, integration, and E2E testing. You understand and enjoy React but you’re the one people turn to when looking to understand the edges of CSS. You like being the QA person because you care about the details, writing smart tests where they matter, and understand—or like finding out—why the unexpected is happening in Safari and Edge.
Accountabilities include: 

Build robust frontend features and components in React and Gatsby
Build new pages and templates
Dive into our React app and clean-up any expensive, WET, or poorly architected CSS implementations
Work with styled-components and CSS-in-JS ( We’re using Emotion.js in Gatsby )
Lead unit, integration, and E2E tests, striving for 75% – 85% code converge
Lead the team’s progressive web app strategy while stiving to improve Lighthouse scores with a root goal of increasing performance and usability for audiences with high latency and unstable internet connections
Find and fix accessibility and cross-browser compatibility issues

Skills

Expert knowledge of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML
Excellence in the details
You understand React
Strong knowledge of writing unit, integration, and end to end tests
Strong knowledge of the major cross-browser compatibility issues and how to solve them
Strong grasp of Progressive Web Apps and know how to make adjustments to meet Lighthouse standards
Technical autodidact who wants to be that frontend expert everyone turns to You have a working grasp of GraphQL and RESTful APIs

Qualifications

3-5 years of enterprise-level web app development experience
2 or more years of experience building React Apps
Have professional knowledge of one or more testing frameworks
Understand the nuances of testing React Apps
Expert knowledge of Javascript, HTML, and CSS
Detailed understanding of Progressive Web Apps and Google Lighthouse (or similar standard)
Self reflective and aligned with Acumen values
Permanently authorized to work in Nairobi
Desire to work with a globally distributed team with remote options
Bonus: working to strong understanding of Gatsby
Bonus: Working knowledge of react native for mobile application development
Bonus: working to strong understanding of CSS-in-JS, particularly Emotion
Bonus:  working to strong grasp of GraphQL and RESTful APIs