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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Android Software Engineer

💰 $100,000 - $160,000

EngineeringMobileAndroid

🎯 Role Definition

We are seeking an experienced Android Software Engineer responsible for designing, building, testing, and delivering world-class Android applications. The ideal candidate will own mobile features end-to-end, collaborate with product and design teams, implement scalable architectures (MVVM, Clean Architecture), and ensure fast, secure, and maintainable app releases using Kotlin and modern Android frameworks (Jetpack, Compose). This role emphasizes high-quality code, instrumentation and unit testing, CI/CD, and performance optimization to provide exceptional user experiences on Android devices.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Junior Android Developer (1–2 years mobile experience)
  • Mobile Engineer (cross-platform, React Native, Flutter) transitioning to native Android
  • Software Engineer (Java/Kotlin backend or desktop) interested in mobile

Advancement To:

  • Senior Android Engineer
  • Staff/Lead Mobile Engineer
  • Mobile Engineering Manager
  • Principal Engineer / Architect (Mobile Platforms)

Lateral Moves:

  • iOS Engineer (cross-platform mobile teams)
  • Full-Stack Engineer (mobile + backend)
  • Developer Advocate / Technical Program Manager (mobile focus)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Architect, design, and implement new Android application features and modules using Kotlin and modern Android frameworks (Android SDK, Jetpack libraries, Jetpack Compose), ensuring modular, testable, and maintainable code that scales across device types and form factors.
  • Own end-to-end feature delivery: collaborate with Product Managers and UX/UI Designers to translate requirements into technical specifications, prototype interactions, and ship high-quality releases to Google Play.
  • Build and maintain app architecture using patterns such as MVVM, MVI, or Clean Architecture; design dependency injection, repository, and data layer strategies using Hilt/Dagger or equivalent.
  • Implement robust networking and data persistence: design and consume RESTful APIs and GraphQL endpoints, implement caching strategies, and manage local databases with Room/SQLite while ensuring offline-first behaviors when required.
  • Write comprehensive unit tests, instrumentation tests, and UI tests (JUnit, Mockito, Espresso, Compose testing) and maintain a high test coverage threshold to reduce regressions and improve developer confidence.
  • Optimize app performance and startup time by profiling memory and CPU usage, reducing ANRs, optimizing bitmap handling, and minimizing APK/AAB size to improve user retention and store ratings.
  • Implement background processing and task scheduling (WorkManager, JobScheduler, AlarmManager) for reliable long-running tasks and push notification handling.
  • Integrate device features and platform services: location, camera, sensors, biometric authentication (Fingerprint/Face), and media playback, ensuring graceful handling of permissions and privacy.
  • Maintain continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines for automated builds, tests, and releases (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Jenkins) and manage signing, versioning, and Play Store rollout processes (internal, staged, production).
  • Perform code reviews, provide constructive feedback, and mentor junior engineers to maintain high engineering standards and accelerate team delivery.
  • Troubleshoot and resolve production issues using crash reporting and observability tools (Firebase Crashlytics, Sentry, Logcat, Android Profiler), perform root-cause analysis, and ship hotfixes as needed.
  • Drive platform upgrades and technical debt reduction: evaluate and migrate to new Android APIs, Jetpack library updates, Kotlin language features, and modernize legacy components.
  • Implement app localization, accessibility (a11y) best practices, and internationalization to broaden user reach and meet compliance requirements.
  • Collaborate with backend engineers to define API contracts, optimize payloads, and implement proper security measures such as TLS/SSL pinning, OAuth flows, token refresh handling, and secure storage (EncryptedSharedPreferences, KeyStore).
  • Design feature flags and remote configuration strategies (Firebase Remote Config, LaunchDarkly) to enable gradual rollouts, A/B testing, and quick rollback of features.
  • Create and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, and architecture diagrams to help onboarding and knowledge sharing across mobile and cross-functional teams.
  • Drive data collection and analytics instrumentation (Firebase Analytics, Amplitude) to track key product metrics, funnels, and events for data-informed product decisions.
  • Evaluate third-party SDKs and libraries for performance, security, and long-term maintenance, and lead integration or deprecation decisions.
  • Contribute to UX improvements by collaborating with designers to implement animations, transitions, and responsive layouts that follow Material Design and platform guidelines.
  • Participate actively in agile ceremonies: sprint planning, backlog grooming, demos, and retrospectives; estimate work accurately and deliver within committed sprint goals.
  • Lead or participate in cross-team initiatives to ensure consistent design systems, shared modules, and best practices across multiple Android apps or product lines.
  • Maintain app stability across Android OS versions and diverse devices, writing compatibility shims and testing on physical devices and emulators to handle fragmentation.
  • Advocate for security and privacy-first development, conduct threat modeling for new features, and ensure compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and company policies.
  • Prototype and evaluate new mobile technologies (ARCore, ML Kit, CameraX) to explore innovative product opportunities and feasibility.

Secondary Functions

  • Support product analytics and A/B test implementations by instrumenting events and validating metric integrity with data teams.
  • Create internal libraries, SDKs, or shared modules to reduce duplication and speed up cross-product development.
  • Assist in recruiting and interviewing candidates for Android and mobile engineering positions.
  • Provide on-call support rotation to address urgent production incidents and collaborate with SRE/DevOps to restore service.
  • Run periodic app health audits that include dependency updates, license compliance checks, and security vulnerability scanning.
  • Facilitate developer tooling improvements, such as templates, Gradle configuration, and local emulators to enhance developer productivity.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Kotlin — advanced proficiency writing idiomatic, coroutine-based asynchronous code (Flow, suspend functions) for production apps.
  • Java — solid understanding and ability to maintain legacy code and interoperable modules when required.
  • Android SDK & Jetpack — extensive experience with activities, fragments, lifecycle, navigation, LiveData/StateFlow, WorkManager, and Paging.
  • Jetpack Compose — practical experience building UI with Compose or experience migrating XML UI to Compose.
  • Architecture patterns — strong experience implementing MVVM, MVI, or Clean Architecture and designing modular, testable components.
  • Dependency injection — hands-on with Hilt, Dagger, or Koin for scalable dependency management.
  • Networking & APIs — expertise with Retrofit, OkHttp, GraphQL clients, WebSocket, and error/retry strategies.
  • Local storage — experience with Room, SQLite, SharedPreferences, and secure storage patterns (EncryptedSharedPreferences, Android Keystore).
  • Testing — proficiency with unit testing (JUnit, Mockito), UI testing (Espresso, Compose Test), and test-driven development practices.
  • CI/CD & DevOps — familiarity with automated build/test pipelines (GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Jenkins), artifact signing, and Play Store release management.
  • Performance profiling — experience using Android Profiler, LeakCanary, Systrace to diagnose and fix performance/memory issues.
  • Version control — strong Git workflows, branching strategies, and pull request management.
  • Build tooling — expertise with Gradle, build flavors, ProGuard/R8 rules, and APK/AAB optimization.
  • Crash & analytics — practical use of Firebase Crashlytics, Sentry, Amplitude, or Mixpanel for observability.
  • Security — knowledge of Android security best practices: secure network handling, certificate pinning, and safe storage of credentials.
  • Play Store — experience preparing, publishing, and managing releases, store listings, and staged rollouts.
  • Cross-platform awareness — familiarity with Flutter/React Native is a plus for collaboration across mobile teams.
  • Device integrations — camera (CameraX), location services, biometric authentication, and multimedia APIs.

Soft Skills

  • Strong communication — explain complex technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders and collaborate cross-functionally.
  • Problem-solving — break down ambiguous product requirements into well-scoped technical tasks and deliver pragmatic solutions.
  • Ownership mentality — take responsibility for features from design through monitoring in production.
  • Mentorship — coach junior engineers, provide thoughtful code reviews, and share best practices.
  • User-focused mindset — build features with performance, accessibility, and user experience as top priorities.
  • Adaptability — learn new Android platform changes and third-party tools quickly and apply them effectively.
  • Time management — estimate work reliably, prioritize effectively, and meet delivery commitments in an agile environment.
  • Collaboration — work productively with product managers, designers, QA, and backend teams to ship cohesive product experiences.
  • Attention to detail — maintain high code quality and clean architecture, producing clear documentation and tests.
  • Initiative — proactively identify technical debt, suggest improvements, and lead refactors or technical migrations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience. Equivalent professional experience and demonstrable mobile app portfolio accepted.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, or related technical field.
  • Additional certifications or coursework in mobile development, Kotlin/Java, or Android-specific topics are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Mobile Computing
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Information Systems

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7+ years building native Android applications in production.

Preferred:

  • 5+ years of mobile development experience with at least 3 years focused on native Android (Kotlin-first).
  • Demonstrable portfolio of published Android applications on Google Play, with measurable impact (downloads, retention, performance improvements).
  • Experience leading or mentoring engineers, owning technical roadmaps, and making architecture decisions for mobile products.
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