Senior Android Engineer (Real-Time Messaging)

F Technologies LLC; Dubai; On-site; AED 300,000 - 420,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

UAE employment visa

Ownership of real-time layer

Senior team mentorship

Job summary

F Technologies LLC, a Dubai-based technology company, designs and builds mobile applications across business, news, and social categories for GCC users. The role focuses on the real-time side of our products: instant messaging, live feeds, and in-app notifications that must feel instant and reliable.

You will own the real-time layer of our Android apps end to end — architecture, persistent connections, offline sync, notifications and performance across devices — working with a senior team.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional Android development with apps live on Google Play.
• Hands-on experience building real-time features (instant messaging/chat preferred).
• Expert Kotlin, Coroutines/Flow, Jetpack Compose, MVVM/Clean Architecture, Hilt/Dagger.
• Working knowledge of XMPP or WebSocket for real-time communication.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build high-performance Android apps in Kotlin with Jetpack Compose.
• Build the real-time layer: persistent WebSocket/XMPP connections, reconnect/backoff, message order and delivery.
• Implement offline-first storage with Room/SQLDelight and ensure sync via Coroutines/Flow.
• Deliver reliable messages, alerts and calls within battery and Doze constraints using FCM and WorkManager.
• Handle media: chunked uploads/downloads, compression, voice notes, CameraX/Media3.
• Maintain app speed and stability on low-end devices; monitor memory, ANR, crashes.
• Apply security best practices: Android Keystore, certificate pinning, end-to-end encryption support.
• Collaborate with backend, iOS, and QA on protocol design and parity; manage Google Play releases and CI/CD.

Skills

Android development

Kotlin

Real-time messaging

Jetpack Compose

MVVM / Clean Architecture

Coroutines / Flow

XMPP / WebSocket

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Smack / XMPP

Room / SQLDelight

Android Studio

Job description

About Us:

We are a Dubai-based technology company that designs and builds mobile applications across several categories - business applications, news applications and social media applications - for users across the GCC. We work with an automation-first, security-first, quality-first mindset and are growing a senior mobile team.

About the Role:

This role focuses on the real-time side of our products: instant messaging and chat, live feeds and breaking-news updates, presence, notifications and in-app communication that must feel instant and never lose data. You will own the real-time layer of our Android apps end to end - architecture, persistent connections, offline sync, notifications and performance across a wide range of devices - and apply it across our business, news and social products.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and build high-performance Android apps in Kotlin with Jetpack Compose.
• Build the real-time layer: persistent WebSocket / XMPP connections, reconnect and backoff, message ordering, delivery and read receipts, typing and presence, live feed updates.
• Build offline-first storage and sync with Room / SQLDelight, Coroutines and Flow.
• Deliver reliable messages, alerts and calls under Doze and OEM battery limits: FCM high-priority, WorkManager, foreground services, ConnectionService.
• Handle media: chunked upload/download, compression, voice notes, CameraX / Media3.
• Keep apps fast and stable on low-end devices: profiling, memory, ANR and crash-free targets.
• Apply security best practice: Android Keystore, certificate pinning, end-to-end encryption support.
• Work with backend, iOS and QA on protocol design and feature parity; own Google Play releases and CI/CD.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional Android development, with production apps live on Google Play.
• Hands-on experience building real-time features: an instant messaging / chat app is strongly preferred; live feeds, social or live-update apps also considered.
• Expert Kotlin, Coroutines / Flow, Jetpack Compose, MVVM / Clean Architecture, Hilt / Dagger.
• Working knowledge of XMPP (e.g. Smack) or an equivalent real-time protocol (WebSocket, MQTT).
• Deep understanding of Android background execution, notification delivery and device fragmentation.
• Unit and UI testing (JUnit, Espresso), Git, code review culture.

Nice to Have:

• Understanding of messaging backends such as ejabberd / MongooseIM (Erlang) - no Erlang coding required.
• End-to-end encryption (Signal protocol), WebRTC calls, Kotlin Multiplatform.
• Experience with news or social media apps; Arabic / RTL UI; Swift or Flutter exposure.

What We Offer:

• Competitive package based on experience, plus UAE employment visa.
• Ownership of the real-time layer across multiple live products, with a senior team.