Job Description

Staff Mobile Engineer

Location: This position is remote based in the US or Canada

Note: This role is a contract assignment for 4 weeks with potential for extension

Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there.
We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.

We’re looking for a Staff Mobile Engineer to lead the architecture and delivery of complex mobile applications across iOS and Android. This role is ideal for an experienced engineer who can define mobile architecture and technical strategy, lead complex system development, and confidently own large parts of the mobile stack end-to-end.

In this role, you will work as a key technical contributor on a cross-functional team, defining standards and best practices, building scalable systems, and solving complex integration challenges. You’ll mentor more junior engineers, collaborate closely with senior engineers and leadership, and deliver high-quality work where reliability, performance, and scalability are critical.

Why This Role Matters

At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate.

Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.

What You’ll Do

Craft & Delivery

• Define mobile architecture and technical strategy across iOS and Android applications (e.g., Swift, Kotlin)

• Lead design and implementation of scalable mobile platforms and complex UI systems (e.g., SwiftUI, UIKit, Jetpack Compose)

• Define mobile development standards and best practices, and contribute to shared design systems

• Drive mobile performance, scalability, and reliability across deployed applications

• Own implementation of mobile security best practices including authentication, secure storage, and biometric authentication

• Lead monitoring, observability, and crash reporting across production mobile systems (e.g., Firebase Crashlytics, Sentry)

• Own CI/CD strategy and release management across the App Store and Google Play (e.g., Fastlane, GitHub Actions, Bitrise)

• Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace

Collaboration & Communication

• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to align technical decisions with product and business goals

• Communicate complex technical tradeoffs and architectural decisions clearly across engineering and non-engineering stakeholders

• Lead code reviews and design discussions, raising the quality bar for the team

Leadership & Influence

• Establish mobile engineering standards that lift quality and consistency across the team

• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers, helping them grow their craft, confidence, and impact

• Make architectural decisions with thoughtful consideration of tradeoffs and long-term implications

What You’ll Bring

• 5+ years of mobile development experience, with strong expertise in both iOS and Android

• Expert proficiency in Swift and Kotlin

• Deep experience with modern mobile UI frameworks (e.g., SwiftUI, UIKit, Jetpack Compose)

• Expertise in mobile architecture patterns and complex state management (e.g., MVC, MVVM, MVI, Clean Architecture, Combine, Coroutines, Flow)

• Experience with REST APIs, GraphQL, WebSockets, and mobile networking

• Strong CI/CD and release management experience (e.g., Fastlane, GitHub Actions, Bitrise)

• Strong testing practices across unit, UI, and integration testing (e.g., XCTest, JUnit, Espresso)

• Experience with mobile security best practices, including authentication, secure storage, and biometric authentication

• Experience with monitoring and observability (e.g., Firebase Crashlytics, Sentry)

• Demonstrated leadership and technical mentoring experience

• Demonstrable usage of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor

• Experience with cross-platform frameworks (e.g., React Native, Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform), accessibility standards, or mobile app monetization is a plus

You’ll Do Well Here if You Are

• A doer. You see something broken and fix it. You'd rather move on clarity than wait for certainty.

• A fast learner who knows you don't know everything. The AI landscape changes weekly. You're senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.

• Direct in a way that makes the work better. You give honest feedback. You'd rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.

• Obsessed with craft. You know genius is in the details. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don't put your name on work you wouldn't stand behind.

• Built for ownership. You honor commitments, admit mistakes fast, and back your teammates when a decision costs something. No handoffs, no finger-pointing.

• All in. You treat clients' businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.

• Resourceful when the budget, timeline, or team is tight. Constraints don't slow you down. They sharpen you.

• Glad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do. Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.