Senior Mobile Software Engineer

Pilot (pilotplans.com); Bengaluru; On-site; INR 2,500,000 - 4,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Pilot in Bengaluru is seeking a mobile-focused engineer to own the iOS/Android experience end to end, including architecture, releases, and performance. You will ship production mobile apps with Deep React Native experience, native Swift or Kotlin, TypeScript, offline-first data, and strong emphasis on user experience and reliability.

Join a fast-moving startup culture with data-driven decisions, autonomous projects, and travel-friendly collaboration.

Qualifications

• 5+ years shipping production mobile apps.
• Deep React Native experience with native modules.
• Proficiency in Swift or Kotlin for native tasks.
• Strong TypeScript skills.
• Experience with offline-first data synchronization.
• Experience with App Store and Play Console releases.
• Ability to profile and improve mobile performance.
• Knowledge of maps, location services, and deep links.
• Familiarity with AI tools to accelerate development.

Responsibilities

• Own iOS and Android apps end to end from architecture to store releases.
• Build for travel conditions, including offline support.
• Own mobile performance and crash triage.
• Manage releases, rollouts, and monitoring.

Skills

5+ years mobile apps

React Native

Native Swift/Kotlin

TypeScript

Offline-first data

App Store/Play Console

Mobile performance

Maps/Location

AI tools for dev

Job description

My name is Connor Wilson. I’m the Founder and CEO of Pilot.

We’re a travel tech company with the mission of helping people like you around the world discover and share memorable experiences in the real world, so you and others can live a happier, more fulfilling life.

But before I talk about us, I want to talk about you.

If you’re reading this job description, you’re probably either unemployed and need a job…

…or you’re already employed, but for some reason or another…

…you’re here…

…because whether you realize it or not, you’re not as happy as you could be.

There could be a lot of reasons for this. Here’s a few:

• You lack faith, trust or closeness to your colleagues or leaders
• Your company is bureaucratic, lacks transparency, or makes siloed top-down decisions
• You’re bored, aren’t learning or being challenged, or don’t care about what you’re working on or what your company does or who it serves
• Your company has an unhealthy or undesirable culture

We’ve been there.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way.

Why you should work at Pilot

Hey, Hi, Hello!

My name is Connor Wilson. I’m the Founder and CEO of Pilot.

We’re a travel tech company with the mission of helping people like you…

But before I talk about us, I want to talk about you.

If you’re reading this job description, you’re probably…

…you’re here…

…because … you’re not as happy as you could be.

There could be a lot of reasons for this. Here’s a few:

• You’re overworked and/or underappreciated
• You lack faith, trust or closeness to your colleagues or leaders
• Your company is bureaucratic, lacks transparency, or makes siloed top-down decisions
• You lack autonomy, freedom, or potential for growth
• You’re bored, aren’t learning or being challenged, or don’t care about what you’re working on or what your company does or who it serves
• Your company has an unhealthy or undesirable culture

We’ve been there.

I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way.

Why you should work at Pilot

If you think you’d like working at a company whose very purpose is to give you and others the absolute best life possible…

…well then Pilot might just be the place for you.

It’s embedded into who we are. That’s why we have a public 23-page culture code. Read it here to see if we vibe: https://bit.ly/3KmavZF

At Pilot you’ll get…

• A 4 day workweek if you complete your full-time work before Friday, with unlimited paid vacation (with manager approval/coordination), and competitive pay through salary and stock options so you’ll own your work.
• Near total autonomy and freedom. You pick your own projects, set your own goals, and work the hours you want, where you want, with who you want. Our team travels all over the world, and you can too.
• Work with people who all want to be your friend (we actually hang out). Our team is incredibly talented, but we value humility.
• Leaders who own their mistakes (yes, that includes me), actively seek feedback to identify and solve them, and are pretty experienced. You can learn more about me at connorjwilson.com. TL’DR: this isn’t my first startup. My last one, NiceJob, sold for $30M in 2021 after we grew it for 3 years without investors, reaching $3.5M in annual recurring revenue.
• Decisions based on data, not based on that LinkedIn post your manager saw that one time. Everyone at every level is empowered to make decisions because we share everything and have a culture of transparency, trust, and experimentation.
• It’s travel, so it’s super fun. It’s a startup, so it’s super challenging with a huge upside. And it’s social impact focused, so you’ll actually be helping people, not just maximizing profits.
• Paid travel on occasion, for training and research. So far we’ve paid for team trips to and around Thailand, Taiwan, Colombia, Portugal, Spain, Hungary, Turkey, India, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, and more. These have been very valuable for the team and we’ll keep doing them.
• We’re proud to have a diverse team, with plans to become a B-Corp eventually.
• We also have some great employer reviews here: glassdoor.ca/Reviews/Pilot-Reviews-E3311415.htm

Reviews and culture code: Glassdoor | Culture code | About Connor

“Okay, but what even is Pilot?”

Great question. Glad you asked.

Pilot is multiplayer consumer AI for travel: the free web & mobile app where groups plan, decide, & book trips together.

Think Notion or Google Docs, but purpose-built for travel, and simple enough that anyone can use it. More visual and interactive than a chatbot. It stays free because we make our money on the booking, not on paywalling the planning.

• We’ve been featured by The Washington Post, WIRED, Forbes, and TechCrunch. We’re Next Canada and Creative Destruction Lab alumni, were selected for TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200, were a New Ventures BC top 10 startup in 2023, and a BC Tech top 3 startup of the year in 2024.
• We’ve raised about CA$2.2M to date, from funds and from angels including the founders of Moment Energy, Nexonia, Farewill, and DayOne, plus an AI engineering leader at Meta.
• Today we’re a team of about 10, led by people who all ship code daily and talk to customers weekly. Check out the team at pilotplans.com/careers
• Our product is live (try it at pilotplans.com). We started with the free trip planner, and now we book too, as merchant of record across 3.2 million stays.
• Over 120,000 travelers have used Pilot to help book and plan their trips
• And it seems to be working. After 10 minutes of planning, 60% of users say they’d be very disappointed to lose Pilot, against a 40% benchmark for product-market fit. People who book come back at 50% after 90 days, close to 3x the travel industry average. We’re rated 4.4 on Trustpilot. Most big OTAs sit under 2.
• We’re growing fast. We went from near-zero to a $1.2M gross-booking run rate in six months, on $10,500 of ad spend. We’re live on Google Travel, which is distribution usually reserved for much later-stage companies, and we’ve signed Skyscanner, Viator, GetYourGuide, Tiqets, Omio, Enterprise, and Faye.
• We’re also unusually efficient. Net burn averaged about $14,600 a month in the first half of 2026, roughly 80% below typical for our stage, with a burn multiple of 0.83. Under 1 is top decile. That means new money goes to growth, not survival.

So that’s us. Feel free to learn more about us at: pilotplans.com/careers

The role. The goal.

Here’s what we’re looking for from you:

It is very simple. We want someone to own mobile. We are live on web, iOS, and Android, and mobile is where a trip actually gets used. Right now nobody owns it end to end.

That covers everything our users do on a phone: planning, discovery, booking, sharing, and the experience while they are actually travelling. A clear surface area with your name on it.

What you’ll be doing and learning

You don’t necessarily need to already have experience doing these (but it helps), and they are entirely subject to change based on what gets the most results. But here goes. The job duties are:

Owning the Apps

• Own the iOS and Android apps end to end, from architecture through to store releases
• Build for real travel conditions, including patchy connectivity and offline use
• Own mobile performance
• Manage releases, rollouts, and crash triage

What You Would Work On

• The trip planner on mobile, including editing and collaborating on the move
• Discovery and browsing, and the path from an idea to a booking
• Booking and checkout on a phone
• Sharing and invites, since trips get passed around between people
• The shared layer between web and mobile, where it makes sense

How We Work

• Work with product, design, and growth to set and execute the roadmap
• Instrument the app so we can see what people actually do, and act on it
• Use AI tools to move faster without letting quality slip
• Talk to customers. Everyone here does
• Anything else as needed. We are a startup, so this is subject to change!

Treat everything above as a starting point, not a job spec carved in stone. It is not exhaustive, and it will change.

Should I apply??!??!?

First of all, obviously.

Second of all, as long as you think you have either the necessary skills, or the ability to learn them very quickly to do this role, you’re good. We care about your ability to execute, not your experience, though it certainly can be an indicator.

That said, the ideal candidate probably has these traits…

Core Technical Skills

• 5+ years shipping production mobile apps, with apps live in both stores you can point us to
• Deep React Native experience, including writing native modules when the bridge is not enough
• Comfortable in at least one native stack (Swift or Kotlin) for when React Native will not do
• Strong TypeScript
• Experience with offline-first data, sync, and conflict resolution
• App Store and Play Store release management, review appeals, and phased rollouts
• Mobile performance profiling and crash reporting
• Experience with maps, location, and deep links is a big plus

AI & Emerging Tech

• Uses AI tools to speed up development and debugging.
• Practical knowledge of LLMs, and able to build on top of existing models to sharpen product experiences.
• Accountable for the quality and reliability of AI-assisted code. Does not blindly hand off without ownership and thoughtful consideration.

Product Sense

• Cares why a feature exists, not just what the ticket says
• Has strong opinions about mobile interaction quality and will defend them
• Understands funnels and conversion, and why a one point lift matters hereComfortable making tradeoffs between shipping fast and building it right

Mindset & Soft Skills

• Able to decompose complex problems into manageable units of work.
• Knows which details to obsess over and when to move fast.
• Very strong written communication. Clear, concise, and human.
• Very curious, loves learning, and does it in their spare time.
• Low ego. Focused on solving the problem, not defending themselves.
• Loves travel and is an experienced traveler.
• Passionate about the mission and energized by the work we are doing.

Working Setup

• Based in or near Bengaluru.
• Comfortable with a few hours of overlap with Pacific time a couple of days a week, and async the rest.
• Self-reliant and able to drive themselves forward without relying on management.

If you meet even 50-70% of these you could be a great fit!