About the job

Lead Software Developer

Location: Accra, Ghana (in-office)

Type: Full-time

Team: Product & Engineering

About Rainforest Builder

Rainforest Builder is Africa’s leading forest restoration company, on a mission to restore one million hectares of degraded land to natural tropical forest. We combine best-in-class science, forestry, and tech, to deliver forest restoration at scale, sequestering hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2, restoring native biodiversity, and delivering equitable economic growth to local communities. We currently operate four projects across three countries in West Africa.

Our technology team is tasked with building and maintaining the software that underpins these operations and processes. These tools are critical to ensuring that our silvicultural operations, carbon and biodiversity assessments, and social and community engagement workflows run efficiently and are backed by accurate, scalable data systems.About the role

We’re looking for a Lead Developer to help accelerate our mission. You’ll work closely with a small cross-functional team — currently one Product Manager and two developers — to design, deliver, and iterate on internal-facing software that helps field and office teams get work done more effectively.

This isn’t a role for someone who wants to manage people from afar. You’ll be hands-on, leading by doing: writing high-quality code, setting technical direction, making architectural decisions, and helping shape our engineering practices and team as we grow.What you’ll do

• Collaborate with our PM and users to design and build software used by field teams, ops leads, and HQ — focusing on capturing consistent data, supporting daily workflows, and improving visibility across operations.
• Work across the stack, from frontend interfaces to backend services, data pipelines, and infrastructure.
• Own technical decisions, from architecture to tooling — choosing approaches that balance speed, scale, and sustainability.
• Establish good engineering practices, helping us ship fast, learn quickly, and build for the long term.
• Mentor and support other developers, helping them grow and work effectively

Essential qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on experience building and scaling full-stack applications, confidently owning everything from frontend UI to backend logic to deployment infrastructure.
• Ability to write high-quality, maintainable code in Python and React, following modern best practices for structure, testing (using TDD), and readability.
• Deep experience designing, deploying and operating production systems in cloud environments (e.g. AWS, Azure), including designing robust CI/CD pipelines, automating testing and deployment.
• Experienced in designing scalable, modular system architectures and making clear trade-offs between performance, simplicity, and long-term maintainability.
• Regularly use AI-assisted development tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Codeium, etc.) to accelerate development and improve productivity.
• Experience recruiting, managing, and coaching teams of software developers.
• Skilled at communicating technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders and translating product goals into clear technical direction.
• Thrive in ambiguous, fast-changing environments, and like solving hard problems simply.
• Have a strong product mindset — you care about outcomes, not just code — and a good understanding of Agile principles.

Desirable qualifications

• Familiarity with mobile-first or offline-first applications.
• Experience in early-stage startups or small, cross-functional teams.
• Knowledge of mapping tools, geospatial data, or data visualisation.

Why join us?

• Be part of a mission-driven startup tackling one of the planet’s most urgent challenges.
• Help shape the foundations of our tech and product stack.
• Join a supportive, purpose-led team where good people do meaningful work.