Role overview
BoursePad is an EdTech and education-support platform on a mission to keep students in school. By connecting students with sponsors, schools, and community partners, we help more students in Nigeria and across Africa continue their education.
As a Volunteer Back-End Developer, you will contribute to the engine that powers BoursePad. You will help build, maintain, and optimize the server-side logic behind our mobile and web experiences.
This role is a good fit if you enjoy building social-impact technology, solving practical problems, and contributing your skills to a mission bigger than code alone.
What you will do
- Build and maintain clean, efficient, and secure RESTful APIs that integrate with BoursePad's mobile and web platforms.
- Design, manage, and optimize relational or NoSQL databases for student profiles, scholarships, sponsors, and application data.
- Contribute to scalable system architecture that can support thousands of students and sponsors.
- Implement authentication, authorization, and data security best practices.
- Turn product and design requirements into reliable backend features.
- Identify bottlenecks, improve server-side performance, and support faster response times.
- Work closely with front-end and mobile developers to keep API integrations smooth.
- Troubleshoot issues, fix bugs, and help maintain stability across the BoursePad ecosystem.
What we are looking for
- Experience with Node.js, Python, or PHP. Node.js is preferred.
- Familiarity with frameworks such as Express, Django, or Laravel.
- Strong understanding of REST APIs.
- Experience with relational or NoSQL databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Firebase, or similar tools.
- Comfort using Git and GitHub.
- Exposure to AWS, Firebase, Google Cloud, or another cloud platform.
- Understanding of DevOps, CI/CD, JWT, OAuth, or related authentication patterns is helpful.
- Strong problem-solving ability, clear communication, reliability, and accountability.
- Passion for education, social impact, and remote collaboration.
What we offer
- Use your technical skills to directly support students.
- Build real-world systems you can include in your portfolio.
- Gain experience in a growing EdTech and social-impact environment.
- Collaborate with product, design, mobile, backend, and community team members.
- Connect with professionals across tech, education, and social impact.
- Receive a formal reference letter and LinkedIn recommendation after a successful volunteer term.
Apply for this role
If you are eager to contribute to a cause that makes a difference and gain meaningful experience, we would love to hear from you.