Mobile Engineer Tech Lead (React Native)
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
As the lead React Native Engineer, you will be the technical and product-driving force behind our iOS and Android apps. You'll lead from the front-spending ~80% of your time building and shipping experiences, and ~20% guiding the team, shaping team direction, and ensuring excellence.
You will:
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Own the mobile experience end-to-end - Take full ownership of the Angel Studios mobile app, ensuring a world-class streaming experience across discovery, playback, and user engagement.
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Drive streaming excellence at scale - Deliver a seamless, high-quality playback experience with fast startup times, minimal buffering, adaptive streaming, and resilient offline playback.
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Build a best-in-class discovery and engagement platform - Design and implement intuitive browsing, search, recommendations, and personalized content experiences that rival top-tier streaming platforms.
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Architect for performance and reliability - Design scalable, maintainable React Native (Expo + TypeScript) architecture that performs across a wide range of devices and network conditions.
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Leverage modern mobile delivery systems - Own and optimize Expo-based workflows, including over-the-air (OTA) updates, CI/CD pipelines, and release strategies to ship quickly and safely.
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Ship fast and iterate constantly - Design and build features like downloads, offline mode, notifications, and membership flows through rapid experimentation and continuous iteration.
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Solve complex mobile challenges - Tackle issues across video playback, background downloads, offline sync, push notifications, and app lifecycle management.
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Measure and improve what matters Define and track key metrics (startup time, buffering rate, crash-free sessions, engagement, retention) and use data to drive decisions.
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Lead through code and influence - Provide architectural direction, conduct high-quality code reviews, and actively mentor engineers while remaining deeply hands-on.
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Multiply team effectiveness - Improve developer experience through better tooling, testing, CI/CD, and shared patterns.
What Success Looks Like
- The Angel Studios mobile app is recognized as a top-tier streaming experience-fast, reliable, and delightful.
- Streaming playback is smooth, resilient, and high quality across devices and network conditions.
- Discovery and recommendations feel personalized, intuitive, and engaging.
- Offline viewing and downloads are seamless and dependable.
- Your architecture enables rapid feature development without sacrificing quality.
- The team ships frequently and confidently using OTA updates and modern CI/CD workflows.
- Engineers are more productive because of the systems, patterns, and guidance you provide.
- You are seen as the clear technical owner of the mobile platform, with strong trust across product and leadership.
Requirements
Do you have experience in TypeScript?, * Builder mindset with product ownership - You think like an owner, not just an implementer-driving both technical and product outcomes.
- Deep React Native expertise - Strong experience building and scaling production mobile apps using React Native and TypeScript.
- Strong mobile architecture skills - Ability to design systems that balance performance, scalability, and developer experience.
- Hands-on leadership - Comfort leading while staying deeply involved in the code (80% IC, 20% leadership).
- Experience with modern mobile tooling - Familiarity with Expo, OTA updates, mobile CI/CD pipelines, and release strategies.
- Streaming/media experience (or similar complexity) - Understanding of video playback, buffering, caching, or other performance-critical systems is highly valuable.
- Performance and reliability focus - You care deeply about app responsiveness, crash rates, and user experience details.
- Experiment-driven mindset - Experience defining and using AB Tests and metrics to guide product and engineering decisions.
- Strong collaboration and communication - Ability to align cross-functional teams and clearly communicate tradeoffs and direction.
- Ownership and initiative - You proactively identify problems and drive solutions end-to-end.
- Adaptability and speed - Comfort working in fast-moving environments with evolving priorities.
- Mentorship and team development - You elevate others through feedback, coaching, and shared standards., * 10-15+ years of software engineering experience (Staff+ level experience)
- 5-8+ years building mobile applications
- 4+ years of React Native experience in production environments
- Strong experience with TypeScript and modern frontend architecture
- Proven track record of owning and shipping complex consumer-facing apps
- Experience working on apps with real users at scale
Preferred Experience
- Experience with Expo and OTA update systems
- Experience building streaming or media-heavy applications
- Experience implementing push notifications and engagement systems
- Familiarity with recommendation systems or personalization
- Experience with subscription/membership flows (in-app purchases, payments, auth)
- Experience with analytics, observability, and performance monitoring tools
- Background in high-performance or resource-constrained environments, Must be authorized to work in the United States.