Mobile Design Engineer

Kraken; Portugal; Remote; EUR 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

Kraken is hiring for a mobile-focused role on a React Native codebase. You will own the motion and interaction layer, including easing, springs, gestures, and sound, while shaping the design system and bridging to native when needed.

You will collaborate with designers to elevate motion, profile rendering performance on lower-end devices, and influence UI responsiveness through architecture and data flow decisions.

Qualifications

• Strong React Native experience with a focus on UI/UX fidelity.
• Experience with animation systems and motion design in mobile apps.
• Ability to profile and optimize rendering performance on mobile devices.

Responsibilities

• Own the motion and interaction layer of the Kraken app, including easing, springs, gestures, transitions, haptics, and sound.
• Evolve the mobile design system by owning components and standards used by engineers.
• Partner with product designers to elevate motion and interaction design from concept to implementation.
• Profile and optimize rendering performance, especially on lower-end Android devices.
• Contribute to architectural decisions affecting UI responsiveness (state management, render cycles, data flow).
• Raise the bar for great mobile experiences by writing pattern guidelines.

Skills

React Native

Reanimated

Skia

Performance profiling

TypeScript

Tools

Git

Figma

Job description

About the Role

The Consumer Mobile team builds the Kraken app, the interface millions of people use to interact with their money. The team works in React Native and cares deeply about how the product feels, not just whether it functions. A trade confirmation should feel instantaneous, a portfolio should feel alive, and navigation should feel effortless. These details directly impact trust, and trust is everything in crypto.

This is a mobile-first role on a React Native codebase. The team works in Reanimated and Skia, bridges to native when needed, and focuses on the split between the JS thread and the UI thread. Most companies treat design and engineering as two practices that translate to each other, but this role treats them as one craft. You'll own the feel of the Kraken app: the half-second a trade confirms, the way a chart loads, and how a sheet rises from the bottom of the screen and lands where it physically should.

• Own the motion and interaction layer of the Kraken app, including easing, springs, gestures, transitions, haptics, and sound.
• Evolve the mobile design system by owning the components other engineers reach for (gesture handlers, transition primitives, animated containers, motion tokens) and the standards that govern them.
• Partner closely with product designers, challenging and elevating motion and interaction design from concept through implementation.
• Profile and optimize rendering performance, especially on lower-end Android devices where frame drops are unforgivable.
• Contribute to architectural decisions that affect UI responsiveness, including state management, render cycles, and data flow into the view layer.
• Raise the bar for what 'great' means across the mobile org by review, by example, and by writing the patterns that make doing the right thing easier than doing the wrong thing.

What You'll Bring

• A portfolio, such a demo reel, a personal site, a GitHub of interaction sketches, or screen captures of work you've shipped that you're proud of. We don't care which format; we care that we can see your craft.
• Deep React Native fluency. You know Reanimated well enough to argue with people about it, you've fought gesture handlers, you've profiled JS thread vs. UI thread work, and you can read a frame timeline to tell where the time went.
• Taste in motion, with opinions about easing curves and the ability to notice when a spring is over-damped.
• Product judgment to take a half-formed brief, find the actual problem inside it, and ship something better than what anyone thought to ask for.
• Use of AI tools as part of how you work, such as Cursor, Copilot, or Claude, to move faster on non-craft tasks.
• Written and verbal English.

Nice to Have

• React Native Skia, shader work, or custom canvas-based rendering for non-standard UI.
• Real native experience, including enough Swift or Kotlin to write a bridge module and enough platform knowledge to know when one is the right call.
• A motion library, design-system contribution, or interaction primitive set that other engineers picked up and used.
• A visual or motion design background, prototyping in Figma, After Effects, or on paper before writing code.
• High-stakes product experience in fintech, trading, health, or anywhere UI precision is load-bearing.

About Payward

Payward is the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks. They have spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.

Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.