Founding Android Engineer
Job Description
The Role
We’re looking for a Founding Android Engineer to join our existing Android engineer, as his full-time partner — co-owner of the Wabi Android app.
Two engineers, no hierarchy. Both 100% accountable for the whole Android product. Architecture and priorities decided jointly. You'll report directly to founder Eugenia Kuyda — no management buffer.
We have a production iOS app, an existing backend, and an Android v1 almost ready for publishing in Play Store. The real game starts right after that — evolving v1 into something dramatically more powerful and beautiful, with deep feature work, modern UI craft, and platform-specific magic that makes Wabi feel truly native on Android, not like an iOS port.
This is not a cross-platform role. We believe in native apps for each platform — the iOS and Android apps will diverge where the platforms diverge. We want someone who lives and breathes Android.
What You’ll Do
Co-own the Android app. Joint architecture, joint priorities, joint accountability.
Ship constantly. Deploy-to-prod speed matters more than architectural elegance — we ship, then refactor in flight.
Build modern, expressive UI — animations, motion, gestures, video, custom components. Consumer-creative craft is the bar.
Drive smart feature parity with the iOS app while making thoughtful platform-specific decisions, using the iOS codebase as a reference and AI tooling to move 10x faster.
Collaborate tightly with founder Eugenia Kuyda and the design team (Antoine, Henry, Joonas) — small, fast loops, real ownership.
Improve the chaos. If you love building AI team tooling — custom agents, internal automations to speed up the whole team — that's a genuine green flag for us. We love that energy.
What We’re Looking For
Mandatory
5+ years of professional Android development with apps shipped to the Play Store. Senior IC depth — close to staff-level technical depth, but you still write code every day. We're not looking for former managers returning to IC; we want builders who never stopped shipping.
Strong Kotlin and Jetpack Compose. Solid grasp of modern Android architecture (ViewModel, coroutines, Hilt/Koin), state management, and networking (Retrofit/Ktor).
Proven modern UI craft. Animations, motion, gestures, video, or custom components — show us things you've shipped where the UI actually feels alive.
AI-assisted development is your daily driver. Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor — at least 1+ year of using AI as a real production tool. This is non-negotiable.
Comfort being directly founder-led at a 15-person startup. Chaotic environment, fast loops, no management buffer between you and the founder. You'll thrive here only if that energizes you.
Highly Valued
Experience building consumer-facing products in AI, social, dating, music, or creative tool spaces — products with personality and craft.
Familiarity with: iOS/swift, Web/JS/TS, and React Native.
0-to-1 product experience or early-stage startup background.
Personal velocity that shows up publicly: GitHub repos, libraries, side projects, conference talks, blog posts. Empty GitHub is fine — busy public work is a green flag.
Living in SF, or strong willingness to relocate. Strong advantage for SF-based candidates. For everyone else: we'll fully support relocation — visa sponsorship, cash relocation bonus, smooth landing.
What We’re Offering
Good cash + equity.
SF strongly preferred. Join us in our awesome Dogpatch office!
Full relocation support for international candidates — visa sponsorship and cash bonus.
Health and 401k plan.
Flexible PTO.
How to apply
Please apply via Ashby or email Alex Katsalukha at [email protected] with:
What's the greatest thing you've shipped or accomplished recently? Short answer, in your own words.
Apps you're proud of — Play Store links, screenshots, demo videos all welcome.
Public profile — GitHub, LinkedIn, plus anything else you'd like us to see: libraries you maintain, talks you've given, side projects, MCPs or agents you've built, posts you've written.