Senior Engineer, Android (Instant Rips)

Socket.dev; New York (NY); On-site; USD 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Fanatics is seeking a senior Android engineer to join the Instant Rips team on Fanatics Live. You will design and ship production Android features for live auctions, streaming, chat, and marketplace, building real-time experiences with Kotlin and Jetpack Compose.

Responsibilities span end-to-end ownership from client contracts to release, with emphasis on performance, reliability, and test coverage. Mentorship and collaboration with cross-functional teams are expected.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building and shipping consumer-facing Android applications at scale.
• Kotlin — deep proficiency with the language and the modern Android ecosystem.
• Jetpack Compose — state-aware UI design, navigation, recomposition behavior, accessibility, and performance-conscious composition.
• Coroutines and Flow — structured concurrency, cancellation, error handling, reactive streams, and lifecycle-aware collection.
• Android foundations — lifecycle, config changes, networking, persistence, and performance optimization.
• Architecture — modular, maintainable apps with clear state management and testable boundaries.
• API and real-time integration — REST or GraphQL with streaming, WebSocket, or subscription patterns.
• Testing — unit, integration, and UI testing with modern Android tools and mocks.
• Operational excellence — profiling, crash and performance monitoring, analytics, experimentation and production debugging.
• Build and release — Gradle and CI/CD with automated pipelines.
• AI-assisted development — using AI tools with validation of output, correctness and security.
• Senior-level ownership — delivering complex features and mentoring others.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship production Android features across the live-break experience: auctions, stream viewing, chat, marketplace, and collector tools.
• Own features end-to-end — client and API contracts, state and business logic, Compose UI, testing, release, and production health.
• Build real-time experiences that stay responsive through reconnects and peak-load events.
• Write meaningful test coverage across unit, integration, and UI layers for Coroutines, Flow, and failure paths.
• Improve performance, stability, accessibility, security, and reliability across Android devices.
• Diagnose production issues using observability, analytics, experimentation, and customer feedback.
• Review PRs for defects, prioritize issues, and mentor on tradeoffs.
• Contribute to architectural decisions on modularization, DI, networking, persistence, and failure handling.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, backend, iOS, Data, and platform teams to deliver cohesive experiences.
• Mentor engineers and raise the quality bar across the team.

Skills

5+ years

Kotlin

Jetpack Compose

Coroutines & Flow

Android foundations

Architecture

API & real-time integration

Testing

Operational excellence

Build & release

AI-assisted development

Senior ownership

Job description

About Us

Fanatics is building a leading global digital sports platform. We ignite the passions of global sports fans and maximize the presence and reach for our hundreds of sports partners globally by offering products and services across Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles, and Fanatics Betting & Gaming, allowing sports fans to Buy, Collect, and Bet. Through the Fanatics platform, sports fans can buy licensed fan gear, jerseys, lifestyle and streetwear products, headwear, and hardgoods; collect physical and digital trading cards, sports memorabilia, and other digital assets; and bet as the company builds its Sportsbook and iGaming platform. Fanatics has an established database of over 100 million global sports fans; a global partner network with approximately 900 sports properties, including major national and international professional sports leagues, players associations, teams, colleges, college conferences and retail partners, 2,500 athletes and celebrities, and 200 exclusive athletes; and over 2,000 retail locations, including its Lids retail stores. Our more than 22,000 employees are committed to relentlessly enhancing the fan experience and delighting sports fans globally.

About Fanatics Collectibles

Fanatics Collectibles is the home of sports cards, trading cards, and collectibles for over 100 million fans worldwide. As part of the global Fanatics platform, we're rebuilding how collectors discover, buy, sell, and experience their hobby — live, in real time, at scale.

Our flagship mobile product, Fanatics Live, is where that experience comes to life: live card breaks, real-time auctions, high-traffic chat, marketplace transactions, and deep collection management tools. The stakes are high and the traffic is real — we build for peak-load moments where latency is visible and reliability is non-negotiable.

The Role

You'll join the Instant Rips Android team — the group responsible for the live-break commerce experience on Fanatics Live.

We build the surfaces millions of collectors use in real time: bidding in live auctions, joining breaks, navigating a high-velocity chat stream, and transacting in the marketplace.

The Android stack is modern by design. We build in Kotlin, use Jetpack Compose for declarative UI, and rely on Coroutines and Flow for asynchronous and reactive work. We favor modular, testable architecture with clear dependency boundaries and build against backend services and real-time data streams that must remain reliable during high-traffic events.

AI tooling is part of how we work. We expect engineers to use it on the job, give it good context, and verify the output — not just accept it.

What You'll Do

• Design and ship production Android features across the live-break experience: auctions, stream viewing, chat, marketplace, and collector tools.
• Own features end-to-end — client and API contracts, state and business logic, Compose UI, testing, release, and production health.
• Build real-time experiences that remain responsive and correct through reconnects, lifecycle changes, degraded networks, and peak-load events.
• Write meaningful test coverage across unit, integration, and UI layers, including deterministic tests for Coroutines, Flow, and failure paths.
• Improve application performance, stability, accessibility, security, and reliability across a broad range of Android devices and OS versions.
• Diagnose complex production issues using observability, analytics, experimentation, and customer feedback.
• Review pull requests with judgment: surface real defects, prioritize what matters, and coach on what to let go.
• Contribute to architectural decisions involving modularization, state management, dependency injection, networking, persistence, and failure handling.
• Partner closely with Product, Design, backend, iOS, Data, and platform teams to clarify tradeoffs and deliver cohesive customer experiences.
• Mentor engineers earlier in their careers and raise the quality bar across the team.

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years building and shipping consumer-facing Android applications at scale.
• Kotlin — deep proficiency with the language and the modern Android ecosystem.
• Jetpack Compose — state-aware UI design, navigation, recomposition behavior, accessibility, and performance-conscious composition.
• Coroutines and Flow — structured concurrency, cancellation, error handling, reactive streams, and lifecycle-aware collection.
• Android foundations — application and activity lifecycle, configuration changes, process death, networking, persistence, background work, and performance optimization.
• Architecture — experience designing modular, maintainable applications with clear state management, dependency injection, and testable boundaries.
• API and real-time integration — experience consuming REST or GraphQL services and working with streaming, WebSocket, or subscription-based data patterns.
• Testing — strong unit, integration, and UI testing practices using modern Android testing tools and dependency fakes or mocks.
• Operational excellence — hands-on experience with profiling, crash and performance monitoring, analytics, experimentation and complex production debugging.
• Build and release — Gradle and CI/CD experience with automated build, test, quality, and release pipelines.
• AI-assisted development — practical experience using AI tools to accelerate engineering work while validating correctness, security, maintainability.
• Senior-level ownership — a track record of independently delivering complex features, communicating tradeoffs clearly, and mentoring other engineers.

Bonus Points

• Experience with live streaming, real-time auctions, or high-throughput WebSocket or subscription workloads.
• Experience with marketplace, e-commerce, payments, or other transaction-oriented Android products.
• Experience supporting high-scale consumer mobile products during traffic spikes or latency-sensitive events.
• Passion for sports cards, collectibles, fandom, or live commerce.

The salary range represents base pay only and does not include short-term or long-term incentive compensation. This salary range is specific to New York City and may not be applicable to other locations. When determining base pay, as part of a final compensation package, we consider several factors such as location, experience, qualifications, and training. For information about our benefits, please visit https://benefitsatfanatics.com/

NYC Salary Range

$160,000 — $200,000 USD

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