Staff Mobile Engineer, Spend Foundation
Staff Mobile Engineer · Staff · Full Time
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Role
What you'll do.
Staff Mobile Engineer leading the Mobile Foundations platform team at Airwallex, responsible for designing and evolving shared mobile architecture, core platform capabilities, and developer experience across iOS and Android native applications. This role combines hands-on technical excellence with cross-team leadership, requiring deep expertise in modern iOS (Swift, SwiftUI, Combine) and Android (Kotlin, Jetpack, Coroutines) development, architectural design, CI/CD optimization, and the ability to influence product teams while maintaining high standards for security, performance, and reliability in a high-scale fintech environment.
Responsibilities
- Lead Mobile Platform Architecture Evolution: Define, design, and evolve the shared architecture across iOS and Android native applications, including navigation systems, state management patterns, networking layers, offline-first strategies, and comprehensive error handling frameworks. Drive critical decisions around modularization and establish clear architectural boundaries between foundation modules and product features to enable faster, more reliable feature delivery.
- Own and Maintain Core Platform Libraries and Frameworks: Take full ownership of shared mobile libraries and frameworks including design system components, analytics infrastructure, feature flagging systems, experimentation platforms, authentication mechanisms, payments integration, and observability tools. Ensure these critical platform components remain stable, well-documented, and easy to adopt and extend across all product teams at scale.
- Drive Mobile Security and Compliance: Champion mobile application security by implementing and enforcing anti-tampering measures, certificate pinning, secure authentication and authorization mechanisms, and mobile-specific security best practices. Establish security guidelines and ensure all platform components meet fintech-grade security standards required for Airwallex's payments and treasury products.
- Establish Performance and Reliability Metrics: Define, implement, and continuously track platform-level performance and reliability metrics including crash-free session rates, ANR (Application Not Responding) occurrences, app startup time, bundle size, network performance, and memory efficiency. Partner with product teams to identify and drive initiatives that improve overall mobile application quality and user experience.
- Implement End-to-End Observability: Design and implement comprehensive observability across the mobile platform encompassing structured logging, metrics collection, distributed tracing, and crash reporting integration. Use data-driven insights from observability systems to guide technical priorities and inform architectural decisions.
- Optimize CI/CD Infrastructure and Developer Experience: Own and continuously improve mobile CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, Bitrise, or similar platforms, focusing on reducing build times, eliminating test flakiness, and streamlining release workflows. Enhance overall developer experience through tooling improvements, code generation templates, comprehensive documentation, and build automation that allows mobile engineers to ship features with confidence.
- Manage Mobile Release Process and On-Call Rotation: Own the end-to-end mobile release process across iOS and Android, ensuring timely, reliable delivery of new app versions to the App Store and Google Play. Establish clear incident response guidelines, lead the on-call rotation for critical platform-level incidents, ensure rapid response and resolution, and drive post-incident learning.
- Define Mobile Engineering Best Practices: Establish, document, and enforce mobile engineering best practices across the organization to maintain a high bar for code quality, maintainability, security, and consistency. Create coding standards, architectural patterns, and technical guidelines that scale across the mobile engineering organization.
- Drive Cross-Team Technical Initiatives: Lead high-impact cross-squad projects from problem definition through execution and adoption, such as design system rollouts, major architectural migrations, or cross-platform feature foundations. Align diverse stakeholders including engineering managers, product managers, designers, and backend/platform teams around technical direction while making pragmatic trade-offs.
- Provide Technical Mentorship and Leadership: Lead by example with clean, testable, well-structured code while setting standards across both iOS and Android platforms. Provide technical mentorship and guidance to senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, pair programming sessions, and coaching. Contribute to hiring, onboarding, and the growth of the mobile engineering community at Airwallex.
Qualifications
What we look for.
Technical
Native iOS Development
Advanced proficiency in Swift with demonstrated expertise in SwiftUI, Combine framework, and Swift's async/await concurrency model for building performant, maintainable iOS applications
Native Android Development
Advanced proficiency in Kotlin with hands-on experience in AndroidX, Jetpack components, Coroutines, and Hilt dependency injection for enterprise-grade Android applications
Mobile Architecture Design
Proven expertise in designing scalable mobile architectures including navigation systems, state management patterns, networking layers, offline-first strategies, and comprehensive error handling
CI/CD Pipeline Engineering
Experience owning and optimizing mobile CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions or Bitrise, with focus on reducing build times, test flakiness, and streamlining release workflows
Mobile Security Implementation
Deep understanding of mobile security practices including certificate pinning, anti-tampering measures, secure authentication mechanisms, and authorization frameworks
Performance Optimization
Expertise in mobile application performance monitoring and optimization including app startup time, memory management, battery efficiency, bundle size reduction, and network performance
Code Quality and Testing
Advanced ability to design for testability and maintainability with proficiency in writing high-quality automated tests, understanding test coverage strategies, and establishing code quality standards
Observability and Monitoring
Experience implementing comprehensive observability across mobile platforms including logging, metrics collection, distributed tracing, and crash reporting integration
Shared Library Development
Track record of building, maintaining, and evolving shared libraries and frameworks consumed by multiple product teams at scale
Education
Bachelor's Degree
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience demonstrating comparable technical expertise
Experience
Senior/Staff Level Mobile Engineering
Minimum 8-10+ years of professional experience building native mobile applications, with at least 3+ years operating at Senior or Staff level with demonstrated technical leadership
Cross-Team Technical Leadership
Proven track record leading cross-team technical initiatives, evolving mobile architectures, and influencing engineers and product teams without direct authority
Mobile Foundations Experience
Experience with platform or horizontal team structures, modularization efforts, design system evolution, or foundational platform work
Influence and Stakeholder Alignment
Demonstrated ability to align diverse stakeholders (engineers, product managers, designers, backend teams) around technical direction and make pragmatic trade-offs
Skills
Required
Swift and Modern iOS Patterns
Expert-level proficiency in Swift, SwiftUI, and Swift concurrency patterns with production experience shipping high-quality iOS applications
Kotlin and Android Ecosystem
Expert-level proficiency in Kotlin with hands-on knowledge of Jetpack, AndroidX, Coroutines, and Hilt for enterprise mobile development
Mobile Architecture and System Design
Ability to design scalable, maintainable architectures addressing navigation, state management, networking, offline capabilities, and error handling
Automated Testing and Quality Assurance
Proficiency in unit testing, integration testing, UI testing, and strategic test coverage implementation for mobile applications
Cross-Platform Mobile Development
Working knowledge of both iOS and Android platforms with ability to maintain consistency and establish platform-agnostic best practices
Developer Communication and Documentation
Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly through documentation, design reviews, and mentorship to support developer adoption of platform libraries
Technical Leadership and Mentoring
Experience leading technical direction, mentoring senior engineers, and building engineering culture through code reviews and best practice establishment
Preferred
Mobile Platform Roadmap Planning
Nice to haveExperience defining and driving mobile platform roadmaps that balance foundational infrastructure work with product delivery constraints
Design Systems and Component Libraries
Nice to haveHands-on experience building, evolving, and scaling design systems or reusable component libraries across mobile platforms
Analytics and Experimentation Frameworks
Nice to haveExperience implementing analytics pipelines, feature flagging systems, and A/B testing infrastructure on mobile platforms
Payments and Fintech Domain Knowledge
Nice to haveBackground in payments, financial services, or B2B SaaS environments where security, reliability, and regulatory compliance are paramount
Mobile Security Specialization
Nice to haveDeep expertise in mobile security practices, anti-tampering techniques, biometric authentication, and secure data handling
Open Source Contributions
Nice to haveActive involvement in mobile open source projects, public speaking on mobile architecture topics, or published thought leadership
Hiring and Team Building
Nice to haveExperience participating in hiring processes, onboarding senior engineers, and growing mobile engineering teams
Tech stack
Languages
Frameworks
Databases
Tools
Other
Compensation
Pay and benefits.
Base·USD 180,000 – 300,000
Equity·Stock options
Benefits
Equity Compensation
Stock options offering meaningful ownership and upside aligned with company success in a high-growth fintech organization backed by leading investors
Competitive Health and Wellness
Comprehensive health insurance coverage including medical, dental, and vision benefits with employer contributions
Flexible Work Arrangements
Work-from-home flexibility with office locations in Singapore, Melbourne, and San Francisco, enabling distributed team collaboration
Professional Development and Learning
Investment in continuous learning through technical conferences, training programs, and opportunities to lead technical workshops and knowledge-sharing sessions
Career Growth and Technical Leadership
Clear path to advancing technical leadership and mentoring responsibilities with opportunities to shape the future of mobile engineering at a scale impacting 200,000+ businesses
Impactful Work on Global Platform
Opportunity to build core infrastructure powering a unified payments and financial platform used by major companies including Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, and SHEIN
Full posting
Original listing.
About Airwallex
Airwallex is the only unified payments and financial platform for global businesses. Powered by our unique combination of proprietary infrastructure and software, we empower over 200,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more – with fully integrated solutions to manage everything from business accounts, payments, spend management and treasury, to embedded finance at a global scale.
Proudly founded in Melbourne, we have a team of over 2,200 of the brightest and most innovative people in tech across 26 offices around the globe. Valued at US$8 billion and backed by world-leading investors including T. Rowe Price, Visa, Mastercard, Robinhood Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Ventures, DST Global, and Lone Pine Capital, Airwallex is leading the charge in building the global payments and financial platform of the future. If you’re ready to do the most ambitious work of your career, join us.
Attributes We Value
We hire successful builders with founder-like energy who want real impact, accelerated learning, and true ownership. You bring strong role-related expertise and sharp thinking, and you’re motivated by our mission and operating principles. You move fast with good judgment, dig deep with curiosity, and make decisions from first principles, balancing speed and rigor.
You're humble and collaborative; turn zero‑to‑one ideas into real products, and you “get stuff done” end-to-end. You use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster. Here, you’ll tackle complex, high‑visibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking. If that sounds like you, let’s build what’s next.
About the team
The Mobile Foundations team sits at the core of Airwallex’s mobile stack. We build and evolve the shared architecture, libraries, and tooling that power our fully native iOS and Android apps.
Our apps help businesses manage global B2B payments, submit and approve expenses, and control both virtual and physical Airwallex cards—complete with seamless Apple Pay and Google Pay integration. On iOS, we work with Swift, SwiftUI, Combine, and async/await. On Android, we use Kotlin, AndroidX, Coroutines, Hilt, and the Jetpack ecosystem.
Mobile Foundations is a platform / horizontal team: we don’t just build features, we create the building blocks that enable product squads to ship faster, more reliably, and with a consistent, high-quality user experience.
This role can be based in Singapore, Melbourne, or San Francisco.
What you’ll do
As a Staff Mobile Engineer on the Mobile Foundations team, you will lead the technical direction of our mobile platform across iOS and Android. You will design and evolve the core architecture, own critical shared components, and act as a multiplier for mobile engineers across product teams.
You will:
Define and evolve mobile architecture
Lead the design and evolution of the shared architecture for our native mobile apps, including navigation, state management, networking, offline strategies, and error handling.
Drive modularisation and clear boundaries between foundation modules and product features.
Own core mobile platform capabilities
Own and maintain shared libraries and frameworks (e.g. design system components, analytics, feature flags, experimentation, authentication, payments, observability).
Be responsible for the application's authentication and authorization mechanisms.
Ensure these components are stable, well-documented, and easy to adopt and extend by product teams.
Improve security, reliability, performance, and observability
Drive mobile application security, including anti-tampering measures, certificate pinning, and security best practices.
Define and track platform-level metrics such as crash-free sessions, ANRs, app start-up time, bundle size, and network performance.
Partner with product teams to drive initiatives that improve reliability, performance, and overall mobile quality.
Strengthen end-to-end observability across mobile (logging, metrics, tracing, crash reporting) and use data to guide priorities.
Elevate developer experience, CI/CD
Own and continuously improve our mobile CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitHub Actions, Bitrise), reducing build times, flakiness, and friction in releasing features.
Improve developer experience for mobile engineers through tooling, templates, documentation, and automation.
Manage Mobile Release, Operational Health, and Best Practices
Own the end-to-end mobile release process across iOS and Android, ensuring timely and reliable delivery of new versions.
Establish clear guidelines and lead the on-call rotation for critical platform-level incidents, ensuring rapid response and resolution.
Define, document, and enforce mobile engineering best practices across the organization to maintain a high bar for code quality and platform consistency.
Lead cross-team technical initiatives
Drive cross-squad projects (e.g. rollout of a new design system, major architectural changes, cross-platform feature foundations) from problem definition through to rollout and adoption.
Align stakeholders (EMs, PMs, designers, backend/platform teams) around technical direction and trade-offs.
Be a hands-on technical leader and mentor
Lead by example with clean, testable, well-structured code on either iOS or Android, while setting standards across both platforms.
Provide technical mentorship and guidance to senior and mid-level engineers through design reviews, pairing, and coaching.
Contribute to and influence hiring, onboarding, and the growth of the mobile engineering community at Airwallex.
Who you are
We’re looking for people who meet the minimum qualifications below. The preferred qualifications are a strong plus, but not strictly required.
Minimum qualifications
8–10+ years of experience building native mobile applications on iOS or Android, including at least 3+ years operating at a Senior or Staff level.
Deep expertise in
iOS: Swift, SwiftUI, Combine, async/await, or
Android: Kotlin, AndroidX, Jetpack, Coroutines, Hilt with commercial knowledge of both platforms.
Proven track record leading cross-team technical initiatives and evolving mobile architectures (e.g. modularisation, design systems, networking, offline support, or similar).
Strong focus on code quality and reliability:
Designs for testability and maintainability.
Writes high-quality automated tests and uses coverage meaningfully (not just as a number).
Experience owning and improving mobile CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitHub Actions, Bitrise), including build optimisation, test stability, and release workflows.
Demonstrated ability to influence without authority:
Aligns engineers, PMs, and designers around technical direction and makes pragmatic trade-offs.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Preferred qualifications
Experience defining and driving a mobile platform roadmap, balancing foundational work with product delivery needs.
Prior ownership of shared mobile libraries or frameworks used by multiple product teams at scale.
Hands-on experience with:
Design systems and component libraries on mobile.
Analytics, experimentation, and feature flagging on mobile.
Observability tooling (e.g. Crashlytics, Sentry, logging/metrics platforms).
Experience in domains such as payments, fintech, or B2B SaaS, especially where reliability, security, and regulatory requirements are critical.
Experience mentoring other senior engineers and playing a key role in hiring and growing mobile teams.
Contributions to the mobile community (open source, talks, blog posts) or evidence of thought leadership in mobile architecture and foundations.
If you’re excited about shaping the foundations of high-quality native mobile apps used by businesses around the world—and multiplying the impact of every mobile engineer at Airwallex—we’d love to hear from you.
Applicant Safety Policy: Fraud and Third-Party Recruiters
To protect you from recruitment scams, please be aware that Airwallex will not ask for bank details, sensitive ID numbers (i.e. passport), or any form of payment during the application or interview process. All official communication will come from an @airwallex.com email address. Please apply only through careers.airwallex.com or our official LinkedIn page.
Airwallex does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms/recruiters. Airwallex will not pay any fees to search firms/recruiters if a candidate is submitted by a search firm/recruiter unless an agreement has been entered into with respect to specific open position(s). Search firms/recruiters submitting resumes to Airwallex on an unsolicited basis shall be deemed to accept this condition, regardless of any other provision to the contrary.
Equal opportunity
Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.
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