Senior Android Engineer

Mainblades; Den Haag; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

30 vacation days + 8 public holiday

Employee Incentive Plan

Optional pension contribution

Fruit, coffee, and colleagues

Job summary

Mainblades is seeking a senior Android engineer in The Hague to lead the Android app for our drone inspection platform. You’ll own core flight operations, handle binary hardware protocols, and drive real-time 3D rendering workflows in production environments.

You’ll collaborate with robotics, hardware, and backend engineers to harden the app, expand architecture, and ensure robust offline/online behavior in demanding operating conditions.

Qualifications

• Deep native Android experience in Kotlin and production apps beyond UI work.
• Experience with communication protocols (serial, protobuf, MAVLink) to hardware.
• Experience with 3D rendering on Android (OpenGL/Filament) and real-time data.
• Strong grasp of offline-first architecture, data sync, and local persistence.
• End-to-end ownership and proactive collaboration with hardware and backend teams.

Responsibilities

• Own Android development (Kotlin) for the core flight operations app.
• Build and maintain abstractions across drone SDKs to avoid single-platform coupling.
• Implement robust communication with the flight computer over binary protocols.
• Develop inspection monitoring tools, including real-time 3D rendering.
• Ensure stability and data integrity across offline/online transitions.
• Sync inspection images, flight path data, and telemetry to the cloud.

Skills

Kotlin

Android development

Hardware communication

3D rendering

Offline-first architecture

Data synchronization

End-to-end ownership

Clear communication

Tools

protobuf

MAVLink

OpenGL

Filament

DJI SDKs

Job description

We build automatic drone systems that inspect commercial aircraft. Our drones fly around airplanes, capture high-resolution imagery, and feed it into ML models that detect structural defects, all in a fraction of the time a manual inspection takes. The concept is proven. Now we're scaling it: making it work across more aircraft types, more airports, and more demanding operating conditions.

What you’ll do

Our Flight app is the interface between the operator, the drone, and everything that happens before, during, and after a flight. It handles inspection configuration, live monitoring, data flows, and sync across environments that are often offline or unreliable. The app is entering production, and your job is to lead Android development through that transition and beyond: hardening what exists, shaping the architecture going forward, and making sure the app holds up in real-world conditions. You'll work closely with the engineers who built the current version and take significant ownership over where it goes next.

This is a native Android role. The app communicates directly with drone hardware over binary protocols, renders 3D flight scenes in real time, and operates in environments where reliability and low-level platform control matter more than UI polish. If your background is primarily in cross-platform frameworks (Flutter, React Native, etc.), this probably isn't the right fit.

Because the app integrates directly with drone hardware, we'd like to see you in the office in The Hague several days per week. Testing with our hardware is important to ensure quality.

The responsibilities you will have:

• Own Android development (Kotlin) for the core flight operations app
• Build and maintain abstractions across multiple drone SDKs, so the app isn't tightly coupled to any single platform
• Implement robust communication with the flight computer over binary protocols (protobuf-based)
• Develop inspection monitoring tools, including real-time 3D scene rendering and interaction (OpenGL/Filament)
• Ensure stability and data integrity across offline/online transitions, in environments where connectivity isn't guaranteed
• Sync inspection images, flight path data, and telemetry to the cloud

The app must be highly robust and performant. Your role is to ensure successful performance at production level. You’ll work closely with robotics- hardware and the full-stack engineer(s) who built the current version and have significant ownership over its future direction.

What we’re looking for

You're a senior Android engineer who has built apps that talk to hardware, handle unreliable networks, and render complex visual data. You have experience building apps that go beyond consuming REST APIs and displaying lists. You have worked deep in the Android platform and you're comfortable with binary protocols and custom rendering pipelines.

What matters most:

• Deep native Android experience in Kotlin, with production apps that go well beyond standard UI work
• Hands-on experience with communication protocols (serial, protobuf, MAVLink, or similar), you've built the layer between app and hardware before
• Experience with 3D rendering on Android (OpenGL, Filament, or equivalent) - not just importing a library, but working with scene graphs, camera transforms, and real-time data
• Solid understanding of offline-first architecture, data synchronization, and local persistence in unreliable network environments
• End-to-end ownership; you drive problems through to resolution without waiting for direction
• Clear communication and collaboration with robotics, hardware, and backend engineers

Bonus points if you have experience with

• Familiarity with drone SDKs (DJI, MAVLink) or experience in adjacent hardware-integrated mobile development
• Background in robotics, automotive, or other domains where the app is part of a physical system

What we offer

You will be part of a dynamic, fun and driven team with a high degree of flexibility.

• Competitive compensation that reflects your experience and impact.
• 30 vacation days + 8 flexible public holiday swap days.
• Employee Incentive Plan, because we believe you should get a stake in what you help build.
• Optional pension contribution (3rd pillar).
• Fresh fruit, good coffee, and fun colleagues.
• A chance to shape not just a product, but an entire industry.