Senior Mobile Engineer

The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism; Baltimore (MD); On-site; USD 140,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism is looking for a Senior Mobile Engineer to enhance their mobile experience across iOS and Android. In this critical role, you'll collaborate with multiple teams to develop a mobile application that engages readers through improved functionalities.

The ideal candidate has significant experience in software engineering, particularly in React Native, and a passion for providing exceptional user experiences. This position offers a salary range of $140,000 - $150,000, depending on qualifications.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience building production mobile applications with React Native.
• Experience developing for both iOS and Android environments.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, and maintain cross-platform mobile applications using React Native.
• Collaborate with Product and Design to translate user needs into polished experiences.
• Improve mobile performance, debugging, monitoring, and production reliability.

Skills

React Native

JavaScript

TypeScript

Mobile performance optimization

API integration

Git workflows

Collaboration skills

Education

5+ years of software engineering experience

3+ years of experience with React Native

Job description

Join one of Baltimore's Best Places to Work!

About the Job

The Banner is seeking a Senior Mobile Engineer to help build and evolve our mobile experience across iOS and Android. This is a high-impact role for an experienced React Native engineer who wants to shape a meaningful consumer product from the inside. You will work closely with Product, Design, Data, Backend Engineering, and newsroom stakeholders to create a fast, reliable, engaging, and intuitive mobile experience for readers.

You will help define how mobile supports personalization, subscriptions, notifications, audience engagement, performance, accessibility, and long-term product growth. The ideal candidate is both a strong hands-on engineer and a thoughtful product partner who cares deeply about user experience, technical quality, and mission-driven work.

• This role is not eligible for relocation, visa sponsorship, or fully remote work.***

What You’ll Build

In this role, you will help create mobile experiences that make local journalism more accessible, useful, and habit-forming. Your work may include:

• Developing new reader-facing features in React Native for iOS and Android.
• Improving app performance, reliability, responsiveness, and stability.
• Building mobile-first experiences for content discovery, personalization, notifications, and reader engagement.
• Integrating with APIs, authentication systems, analytics platforms, push notification systems, and third-party services.
• Supporting experimentation, feature flagging, observability, and release management.
• Creating strong foundations for a scalable mobile platform as the product grows.

What You’ll Do

• Design, develop, test, and maintain cross-platform mobile applications using React Native.
• Own significant mobile features from technical planning through implementation, release, and iteration.
• Collaborate with Product and Design to translate user needs and mobile UX patterns into polished, accessible experiences.
• Partner with Backend and Data teams to integrate APIs, analytics, personalization, and engagement tools.
• Improve mobile performance, debugging, monitoring, and production reliability.
• Contribute to mobile architecture, engineering standards, CI/CD practices, and release processes.
• Troubleshoot production issues and use data, observability, and user feedback to improve the app experience.
• Mentor other engineers and help raise the quality of mobile development across the team.

What You’ll Bring

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on experience building production mobile applications with React Native.
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript and TypeScript.
• Experience developing for both iOS and Android environments.
• Understanding of mobile app lifecycle, deployment, app store processes, and release management.
• Experience integrating RESTful APIs and working with modern backend systems.
• Familiarity with state management patterns such as Redux, Context API, or similar approaches.
• Strong understanding of mobile performance optimization, debugging, testing, and observability.
• Experience with Git-based workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate across engineering, product, design, data, and editorial teams.
• A product-mind approach to engineering and a genuine interest in building excellent user experiences.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Expo and modern React Native tooling.
• Experience with analytics, engagement platforms, push notifications, or in-app messaging.
• Familiarity with experimentation, A/B testing, personalization, or subscription products.
• Knowledge of mobile accessibility, security, and performance best practices.
• Experience in media, news, consumer subscription, marketplace, or other high-scale digital product environments.
• Familiarity with cloud-native architectures or AWS-based ecosystems.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, success means helping The Banner deliver a mobile experience that is fast, stable, intuitive, and valuable to readers. You will help strengthen the technical foundation of our mobile products, ship meaningful features, improve app quality, and contribute to a product culture that values experimentation, accessibility, performance, and reader trust.

Salary Range

$140,000 - $150,000. Individual pay may vary from the target range and is determined by several factors, including experience, internal pay equity, and other relevant business considerations. This role is not eligible for corporate bonus opportunity. We constantly review all teammate pay to ensure a great compensation package that is fair and equitable across the board.

Our Core Values

• Do what's right. Honesty, morality, respect and the mission guide our actions and decisions. By doing the right thing, we inspire others to believe.
• Work together. We collaborate to create something special. Together we challenge assumptions, trust each other, take risks, and foster transparent and direct communication.
• Listen to be heard. Our stories are trustworthy. They are inspired by and created for our readers. Their story is our story. Communities are at the center of our journalism, and everything we do.
• Deliver impactful results. Acting as one accountable team and driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, we deliver bold and innovative results. We act fast, execute and learn. We celebrate great outcomes.
• Be inclusive. We celebrate the uniqueness of each individual and act by curating a culture that leverages diverse perspectives as the key to fulfilling our mission. The Banner is for all of us.

The Venetoulis Institute embraces diversity and inclusion, and we are wholeheartedly committed to being proactive in inspiring a culture of inclusion across our organization. We are dedicated to establishing an organization that reflects the fundamental respect for different ways of working and living. We assure every employee the opportunity to reach their full potential.

We are dedicated to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities throughout the recruitment process. If you require accommodation due to a disability to participate in the application process, please contact [e-mail] to request accommodation. Reasonable accommodations may include, but are not limited to, adjustments in the application process, modifications or assistance regarding job interviews, and accommodations to enable access to our facilities. We appreciate the value that individuals with disabilities bring to our workforce and encourage applicants with disabilities to disclose their needs for accommodation to facilitate a smooth and inclusive recruitment experience.