Volunteer: Backend Systems & Data Lead — NESA-Africa

Volunteer: Backend Systems & Data Lead — NESA-Africa

📍 Remote (Lagos-based volunteers welcome to work onsite in Surulere) | 🕒 Volunteer / Unpaid | ⏳ Flexible, with milestone commitments

🔹 Own the data backbone of a continental education recognition platform

🌱 About NESA-Africa

NESA-Africa is the Awards & Participation platform of Santos Creations Educational Foundation (SCEF), a Pan-African education ecosystem that also runs EduAid Africa and eLibrary Nigeria.

• 🌐 NESA Africa: www.nesa.africa
• 🌐 EduAid Africa: www.eduaid.africa
• 🌐 SCEF (parent organisation): www.santoscreations.org

The platform currently tracks 1,452+ Education Enablers across 85 countries, 2,500+ nominees, 20 recognition categories, and is building toward the NESA-Africa 2026 Recognition Gala in Lagos on 13 December 2026. It is endorsed by FAWE and CSACEFA and governed under SCEF's six governance pillars (Transparency, Safeguarding, Data Protection, Conflict of Interest, Anti-Bribery, Reporting).

This is a volunteer role — unpaid, mission-driven, and built for someone who wants real ownership of a live, high-visibility African data system rather than a resume line.

🌍 Role Overview

You will be the data architect and system-integrity owner for NESA-Africa's entire nominee, judging, and participation ecosystem — solving the platform's actual, current data problems, not a hypothetical dataset.

🎯 What You'll Actually Be Solving

This isn't a generic "manage our database" brief — these are the live data problems on nesa.africa right now:

• Central database consolidation — reconciling the ~2,051-record central master file (1,703 award-nominee source + 360 Icon source records, with only 8 direct name matches so far) into one clean, deduplicated, stable-ID nominee schema
• Bulk import tooling — finishing what manual batch-by-batch SQL import couldn't do efficiently: help scope, test, and validate an admin CSV/XLSX bulk-upload tool so remaining records import safely and repeatably
• Contact data for 5,000+ nominees — NRC data entry volunteers are actively generating the 5,000+ nominee list across 18 award categories; the Data Lead is responsible for turning that raw entry data into verified, usable contact records — enriching missing or incorrect emails and phone numbers (via contact-enrichment tools and self-service confirmation flows), validating formats, and flagging unreachable records
• Bulk SMS & email outreach readiness — structuring the contact database (with a confidence flag: verified / enriched-unverified / missing) so it can power reliable bulk SMS and email campaigns to nominees across all 18 categories, without bouncing or reaching the wrong person
• Judges Arena / NRC data flow — supporting the existing 29-table, 11-RPC Judges Arena backend and the NRC → Judges Arena handover pipeline (nomination → NRC review → one-directional read-only conclusion handover → panel scoring)
• Filtered-query integrity — auditing that every "explore nominees" pathway across the site (Icon, Education Impact Certificates and its 6 sub-pathways, regional listings) queries the correct filtered dataset rather than silently falling back to the unfiltered list
• Dashboards & reporting — building real-time views for nominee counts, voting/judging progress, membership growth, chapter activity (currently 34 volunteers/judges/NRC members across 11 countries and 5 chapters), and donation/funding tracking
• Data governance — deduplication, validation rules, and access control aligned with SCEF's Data Protection governance pillar

👥 Team & Support

• Work directly with the platform's Fullstack Engineer on the live Lovable/Supabase codebase (github.com/Santos-pkis/NESA-2026)
• Work alongside the NRC data entry volunteers who are generating the 5,000+ nominee list across 18 award categories — guiding their entry standards and turning their raw output into a clean, contactable database
• Guide and quality-check data-entry volunteers and validation contributors as the program scales
• Report progress to SCEF leadership

🎯 Success Looks Like

• Central database fully deduplicated and merged into one dynamic, stable-ID system
• Bulk import tool live and used to finish migrating remaining nominee records
• Zero major data inconsistencies feeding the Icon, Education Impact Certificate, and regional pathways
• Real-time dashboards operational for nominees, judging, membership, and funding
• Clean data integration supporting the Gala, TV Showcases, and NRC/Judges Arena cycle
• Verified email/phone coverage across the 5,000+ nominee list (18 categories), ready for bulk SMS and email outreach without bounce or misdelivery

🌟 What You Gain (No Salary — Real Value Instead)

• Ownership of the data layer of a platform reaching 85 countries, ahead of a live December 2026 Gala
• Portfolio-grade work: a real, cited system-design and migration case study for future roles
• Direct mentorship path toward a senior data architect track as the platform scales toward 50,000+ records
• Public recognition as part of the NESA-Africa/SCEF volunteer network, with letters of reference on request
• Flexible, remote-first commitment — no relocation required (Lagos-based volunteers may work onsite by choice)

As this is unpaid volunteer work, SCEF does not cover accommodation, feeding, or personal expenses. Remote volunteers can contribute from anywhere.

🗓️ NESA-Africa 2026 Recognition Cycle Timeline

Your data work runs against this live schedule (source: nesa.africa/timeline) — plan enrichment, verification-support, and dashboard milestones around it:

Phase Dates Why it matters for this role

Public Activation

8 Jul – 6 Sep 2026

Nominee inflow begins; database and contact-schema must be ready

NRC Member Onboarding

8 Aug – 4 Sep 2026

NRC data entry volunteers train up across all 4 tiers — your entry standards and QC process must be in place before this peaks

Weekly News / Podcast / Webinar Series

From 14 Aug 2026 (ongoing through 19 Nov)

Ongoing content streams need accurate live nominee/stat data to report from

Nominations Open — all 4 tiers

From 6 Sep 2026

Icon, Gold-Blue Garnet, Platinum Recognition, Influencer Education Impact — full 5,000+/18-category volume starts landing

Africa Education Icon Nominations

6 Sep – 6 Oct 2026

3 subcategories × 3 origin groups (2006–2026 eligibility); first data-freeze checkpoint at close

Gold-Blue Garnet / Platinum / Influencer Nominations

6 Sep – 21 Nov 2026

Extended window (nominees can request physical certificates); rolling volume needs continuous enrichment, not a one-time batch

Icon Judges Onboarding & Calibration

6 – 19 Oct 2026

27 judges, COI declarations, rubric training

NRC Review of All Icon Nominees → Judges Arena

7 – 20 Oct 2026

NRC verification data flow into Judges Arena must be reliable — this is a hard handover deadline

Gold-Blue Garnet NRC Verification (rolling)

23 Sep – 13 Dec 2026

Continuous NRC verification against the EDI Matrix — contact data needs to stay current throughout, not just at nomination

Judges' Final Review & Selection (all 9 Icon pathways)

20 Oct – 24 Nov 2026

All 9 Icon recipients confirmed/ratified by 24 Nov

Gold-Blue Garnet / Platinum / Influencer Nominations Close

21 Nov 2026

Second data-freeze checkpoint — contact enrichment and dedup should be substantially complete by here

TV Showcase 1 (Platinum + Influencer)

22 Nov 2026

Requires verified nominee data for broadcast-ready lists

Final Verification & Gala Production

25 – 29 Nov 2026

Verified profiles, citations, and broadcast scripts finalized post Icon-selection lock

TV Showcase 2 (Icon + Gold-Blue Garnet)

8 Dec 2026

Same

TV Showcase 3 + NESA-Africa 2026 Recognition Gala — Lagos

13 Dec 2026

Hard deadline: contact database (email + bulk SMS-ready) must be clean and verified across all 18 categories before this date

Impact & Legacy Phase

22 Dec 2026 – 13 Dec 2027

Post-Gala reporting and long-term data governance

✅ Onboarding — 3 Must-Answer Questions

Before moving to the full interview, every applicant must answer these three.

1. A nominee named "Chidinma Okafor" (organisation: Bright Future Academy) has no email or phone number on file. How would you find and verify a real, working contact for her?
2. NESA-Africa is collecting 5,000+ nominees across 18 award categories, and 1,000 records arrive with missing or bad contact info three weeks before the 13 December 2026 Gala. What's your triage plan to get as many verified and ready for bulk SMS/email as possible in that window?
3. This is unpaid, mission-driven volunteer work with hard deadlines. What will you deliver in your first 30 days, and how many hours a week can you realistically commit through 13 December 2026?

Applications without written responses will not be reviewed.

Further Interview Questions (Data & System-Focused)

1. Database Design Experience — Describe a database or system you designed or managed: the problem, the data structure, the challenges, and the outcome. Real examples only.
2. Platform Data Analysis — Review www.eduaid.africa. What data structures are missing? What would you improve, and how would you redesign it for scale?
3. Data Migration (Critical) — NESA-Africa has ~2,051 central-database records with only 8 confirmed matches across sources. Explain how you'd clean, structure, migrate, and validate this data.
4. Data Integrity & Control — How do you prevent duplicate records, corruption, and inconsistent entries? Name real methods and tools.
5. Reporting & Analytics — How would you build dashboards tracking nominees, voting, membership, and funding? What tools and structure?
6. Contact Data Enrichment (Critical) — NRC data entry volunteers are generating a 5,000+ nominee list across 18 award categories, but many records have missing or incorrect emails and phone numbers. How would you enrich, verify, and flag confidence levels on this contact data at scale, and how would you get it ready for reliable bulk SMS and email outreach?
7. Real Scenario — Post-launch, inconsistencies and duplicates appear across nominees and reports are inaccurate. What's your immediate response, short-term fix, and long-term prevention plan?

🔥 What We're Looking For

✅ Real data-systems experience, structured thinking, attention to detail, problem-solving ❌ Theoretical or generic answers

🚀 Bottom Line

• This is for someone who wants to build a large-scale data system that matters, own its integrity end to end, and grow into a senior data architect role — as a volunteer contribution to a continental education mission, not a paycheck.