Senior Backend Engineer — AfriVote Platform

About the role

AfriVote requires a Senior Backend Engineer with security expertise to build the cryptographic heart of the platform — the voting engine, audit trail, and zero-knowledge proof system that gives the platform its integrity guarantees. This is one of the most technically demanding backend roles in the SST ecosystem, requiring deep knowledge of cryptography, distributed systems, and high-stakes data integrity. Your primary deliverables: the vote submission and validation engine that accepts cryptographically signed submissions and verifies them against the citizen's registered public key; the Merkle tree audit log that provides tamper-evidence for all submissions and allows public verification without exposing individual votes; the zero-knowledge proof generation and verification system for secret ballot consultations (using snarkjs or a similar ZK library); the USSD gateway integration with Africa's Talking for SMS-based voting; the rate limiting and fraud detection system that prevents duplicate voting and organised ballot stuffing; and the government results API with real-time vote tallying and confidence intervals. You will use Node.js, TypeScript, PostgreSQL for the transactional voting database, and Redis for real-time tallying. You will implement all cryptographic operations using well-audited libraries (noble-crypto, snarkjs) rather than building crypto from scratch. You will work with an external security auditor to validate the implementation. Experience with cryptographic systems, zero-knowledge proofs, or electoral technology is highly desirable. This role requires a developer who understands the stakes — mistakes in this system have democratic consequences.