Mobile Design Engineer

Kraken; Ireland; On-site; EUR 60,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading crypto company in Ireland seeks a skilled React Native developer to enhance their mobile app. You'll own the craft layer and ensure fluid interactions while optimizing performance, especially on lower-end devices. Strong experience in mobile interfaces and a portfolio showcasing your work are required. This role involves mentoring fellow engineers and contributing to architectural decisions. An equal-opportunity employer, the company values diverse backgrounds and ongoing applications.

Qualifications

• Deep experience with React Native and performance profiling.
• A portfolio demonstrating your work is required.
• Ability to mentor and raise standards across the team.

Responsibilities

• Own the craft layer of the React Native mobile experience.
• Optimize rendering performance, particularly on lower-end devices.
• Contribute to architectural decisions affecting UI responsiveness.

Skills

Building polished mobile interfaces in React Native

Interaction design

Strong written and verbal communication skills in English

Experience with modern AI development tooling

Job description

Build the Future of Crypto

Kraken is a mission‑focused company rooted in crypto values. As a Krakenite, you’ll help accelerate the global adoption of crypto so that everyone can achieve financial freedom and inclusion. Our team is world‑class, composed of crypto experts who develop premium products for traders, institutions and newcomers worldwide.

The Consumer Mobile Team

We build the Kraken app — the interface millions of people use to interact with their money. Working in React Native, we focus on how the product feels, not just whether it functions. The experience must feel instantaneous, alive, effortless, and trustworthy.

Opportunity

• Own the craft layer of our React Native mobile experience — fluid, gesture‑driven interactions and transitions that feel native, not web‑in‑a‑wrapper.
• Push React Native beyond its defaults: use Reanimated, Skia, and native module bridges when the abstraction isn’t enough.
• Partner closely with product designers, challenging and elevating motion and interaction design from concept through implementation.
• Establish animation primitives and interaction patterns within our design system that other engineers build on — your work becomes the quality floor for the team.
• Profile and optimise rendering performance, especially on lower‑end Android devices where frame drops are unforgivable.
• Contribute to architectural decisions that affect UI responsiveness: state management, render cycles, and data flow into the view layer.
• Mentor engineers on interaction quality and raise the standard for what "done" looks like across the mobile org.

Skills You Should HODL

• Deep, demonstrable experience building polished mobile interfaces in React Native — you know Reanimated, you’ve fought with gesture handlers, and you have profiled JS vs UI thread performance and won.
• A trained eye for interaction design — you notice when an easing curve is wrong, you have opinions about spring physics, and you understand that 60 fps isn’t a target, it’s a constraint.
• A portfolio or demo reel of shipped work is a hard requirement — a personal site, video walkthrough, GitHub interaction demos, or screen captures of work you’re proud of.
• Experience with modern AI development tooling (Cursor, Copilot, or similar) as a natural part of how you build — not as a novelty, but as a multiplier.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English.

Nice to Haves

• Experience with React Native Skia, custom shader work, or canvas‑based rendering for non‑standard UI.
• Some native platform knowledge (Swift/Kotlin) for when you need to drop below the RN abstraction — bridging, native modules, platform‑specific behaviour.
• Built interaction patterns that other engineers adopted — shared animation libraries, gesture primitives, motion design systems.
• Background in or affinity for visual/motion design — prototyping in Figma or After Effects before you write code, or sketching interaction flows on paper.
• Experience in high‑stakes product domains (fintech, health, trading) where UI precision affects user trust.
• Strong opinions, loosely held — you push back on designs that won’t translate well to mobile and advocate for the user’s experience, but you also know when to ship and iterate.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

As an equal‑opportunity employer, we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind. Whether that’s based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state or local laws.

Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis. Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, you may apply at any time.