🇩🇪 Berlin, Germany · 2w ago
Volunteer Back End Developer for First Radio App in East Africa with MICT gGmbH Household
MICT - Media in Cooperation and Transition
LinkedInjuniorEnglish-friendly
This is an opportunity to work with an Ashoka Fellow Ashoka Fellows are leading social entrepreneurs that have been taken through a rigorous selection process, testing the quality of their ideas and character, to become part of the Ashoka Fellowship and Network. Ashoka Fellows take on the challenges of building innovative system change ideas to make and spread social impact in a world wrought with challenges. They refuse to let the ‘impossible’ stand in their way to creating a better world.This is an unpaid, volunteer opportunityAbout The Affiliated OrganizationMiCT has been working in media development across East Africa for nearly 20 years — training journalists, building radio networks, supporting outlets in conflict zones. Over that time, one problem kept coming up: the stations MiCT works with produce important local journalism, but they can't sustain it financially. Donor funding is shrinking, and the global digital ad economy flows to Google and Meta, not to a community radio station in Kampala or Juba. EARS grew out of that experience. The basic insight is simple: a single small station with 5,000 listeners can't attract national advertisers. But 200 stations aggregated on one platform can. EARS combines the audiences of many local stations into packages large enough to be interesting to serious advertisers — telcos, FMCGs, banks — while keeping the revenue with the stations themselves. So MiCT founded EARS as the commercial counterpart to its development work. MiCT builds journalistic capacity; EARS builds the revenue infrastructure so that capacity doesn't depend on the next donor cycle. It started with FM advertising sales across East Africa, and now we're extending that model to digital streaming — the app and ad server we're building. The logic is the same: aggregate local audiences, sell them professionally, return the money to local media. The difference is that digital gives us better targeting, certified measurement, and access to advertisers who are shifting budgets online. In short: EARS exists because media sustainability is a media development problem, and MiCT decided to build the tool rather than just talk about it.For more information, please visit www.mict-international.orgJob DescriptionWe are building the first radio app in East Africa, bringing over 200 stations onto one platform to stream their programs and generate incremental online ad revenue for the radios. To monetize these streams, we need a back-end developer to build a simple, open-source ad server. Stack: Python 3.12 / FastAPI / PostgreSQL 16 / Redis / AWS Audience measurement: Triton Webcast Metrics (certified from day one)What We Want To BuildA first-party ad server and lightweight DMP (Data Management Platform) running on a dedicated AWS instance, separated from the main streaming infrastructure. No programmatic bidding, no marketplace, no RTB. This is a direct-sold ad server: we manage the ad catalog, the audience segments, and the delivery logic ourselves. The MVP delivers two things:Audio pre-roll — an audio ad injected before the main stream begins Video pre-roll — a video ad played in the player UI before audio streaming starts All ad decisions are made server-side. The player calls our ad server, receives a VAST 4.1 response, renders the creative, and reports back. Please let us know today if you can help!Volunteer LogisticsEstimated hours required per week: 8The estimated duration of the project is: 1-3 monthsThis position is Virtual (Remote)Language RequirementsEnglishMust-haveDesired Skills And ExperiencePython 3 / FastAPI (or similar async framework like Django/FlaskFastAPI is easy to pick up) PostgreSQL and SQLAlchemy (data modeling, queries, migrations with Alembic) Redis (caching, counters, TTL-based key management for frequency capping) AWS basics: EC2, RDS, S3, CloudFront — deploying and connecting services REST API design — clean endpoints, proper status codes, authentication XML/Jinja2 templating (for generating VAST responses) Very helpful:** Docker (containerized deployment, docker-compose for local dev) Basic ad tech understanding — doesn't need to be deep, but should grasp what an impression is, what VAST does, what pre-roll means. They'll learn the rest from the brief.GeoIP integration (MaxMind) — straightforward but needs to be done right Async Python (asyncio, asyncpg) — the whole stack runs async Nice-to-have:**Terraform or AWS CDK for infrastructure-as-code Experience with high-throughput event logging (the tracking beacons will generate volume)Any prior ad server or streaming media experience Not needed:** Frontend skills (player integration is a separate task) Machine learning / data science Programmatic ad tech (OpenRTB, DSP/SSP) — we're deliberately avoiding thatSourced from LinkedIn. Relocantly aggregates public job postings; apply on the original site.