Tech Lead, Android Core Product - Newcastle, United Kingdom

speechify; Newcastle; Remote; AUD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salaries

Asynchronous culture

Impactful product

Job summary

The company is on a mission to make reading accessible and enriching. We are a fully distributed team building world‑class text-to-speech products across Android, iOS, web, and extensions.

We are seeking a Senior Android Engineer to help scale our Android app, push UI/UX excellence, and own features end‑to‑end in a fast-paced, collaborative setting. You will shape product decisions, lead by example, and drive high quality code with a strong focus on tests, performance, and user experience.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience.
• Familiarity with Android components.
• Experience building or contributing to at least one Android app.
• Product design intuition and user empathy.
• Drive to push the boundaries of Android UI/UX.
• Understanding of tests and writing tests.
• Self-drive to improve the app and codebase beyond the spec.
• Rock solid experience with Kotlin, Kotlin Coroutines, Kotlin Flow, Dagger 2, MVVM, Clean Architecture, Background Services, Music Player Service, Android Animations, Jetpack Navigation, JUnit tests.

Responsibilities

• Own major features and collaborate with design to deliver high quality features.
• Shape the future of the Android team.
• Maintain and improve reliability metrics for key features.
• Participate in cross-team discussions (Product, Design, Engineering).
• Review pull requests and support teammates.
• Handle critical issues or unexpected challenges.
• Own feature releases and provide nightly builds for QA.

Skills

Android

Kotlin

Testing with JUnit

MVVM Architecture

Jetpack Navigation

Dagger 2

UI/UX Focus

Tools

Kotlin Coroutines

Kotlin Flow

Jetpack Compose

Room

Custom Views/Canvas

JUnit

Job description

The mission of the company is to make sure that reading is never a barrier to learning.

Over 50 million people use the company’s text-to-speech products to turn whatever they’re reading – PDFs, books, Google Docs, news articles, websites – into audio, so they can read faster, read more, and remember more. the company’s text-to-speech reading products include its iOS app, Android App, Mac App, Chrome Extension, and Web App. Google recently named the company the Chrome Extension of the Year and Apple named the company its Design award winner for inclusivity for 2025.

Today, nearly 200 people around the globe work on the company in a 100% distributed setting – the company has no office. These include frontend and backend engineers, AI research scientists, and others from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, leading PhD programs like Stanford, high growth startups like Stripe, Vercel, Bolt, and many founders of their own companies.

Overview

With the growth of our Android app, being the most used text-to-speech app in the Play Store, we find the need for a Senior Android Engineer to help us support the new user base as well as work on new and exciting projects to push us forward.

This is a key role and ideal for someone who thinks strategically, enjoys fast-paced environments, passionate about making product decisions, and has experience building great user experiences that delight users.

We are a flat organization that allows anyone to become a leader by showing excellent technical skills and delivering results consistently and fast. Work ethic, solid communication skills, and obsession with winning are paramount.

Our interview process involves several technical interviews and we aim to complete them within 1 week.

What You’ll Do

• Owning major features and working closely with our design team - take ownership of features inside the app and become responsible of delivering high quality features
• Shape the future of our Android team
• Own, maintain and improve reliability metrics for key features
• Participate in discussions across different teams - Product, Design, Engineering
• Review pull requests, and support other teammates
• Handle critical issues or cope with unexpected challenges
• Take ownership of feature releases and provide nightly builds for the QA team

An Ideal Candidate Should Have

• 5+ years of software engineering experience
• Familiarity with Android components
• Experience building or contributing to at least one Android app
• Product design intuition and user empathy
• Drive to push the boundaries of Android UI/UX
• Understanding of the importance of tests and how to approach writing tests
• Self-drive to improve the app and codebase above and beyond what's outlined in the spec
• Rock solid experience with Kotlin, Kotlin Coroutines, Kotlin Flow, Dagger 2, MVVM, Clean Architecture, Background Services, Music Player Service, Android Animations, Jetpack Navigation, JUnit tests
• Excellent communication skills
• User oriented problem solving approach
• Driven with continuous feedback from leaders

Bonus:

• Experience building, maintaining, or otherwise contributing to open source projects in Android
• Experience with iOS, Web or NodeJS

Technologies we use:

• Kotlin
• Kotlin Coroutines
• Kotlin Flow
• Jetpack Navigation
• Dagger 2
• Room
• Custom Views, Canvas & Paint
• Jetpack Compose
• JUnit

What We offer

:

• A fast-growing environment where you can help shape the company and product.
• An entrepreneurial-minded team that supports risk, intuition, and hustle.
• A hands-off management approach so you can focus and do your best work.
• An opportunity to make a big impact in a transformative industry.
• Competitive salaries, a friendly and laid-back atmosphere, and a commitment to building a great asynchronous culture.
• Opportunity to work on a life-changing product that millions of people use.
• Build products that directly impact and support people with learning differences like dyslexia, ADD, low vision, concussions, autism, and more.
• Work in one of the fastest growing sectors of tech, the intersection of artificial intelligence and audio.

the company is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace.

the company does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or other legally protected status.