Staff Mobile Engineer, Spend Foundation

Airwallex; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Airwallex is seeking a Staff Mobile Engineer for the Mobile Foundations team in San Francisco. This role involves leading technical direction and designing the core architecture across iOS and Android platforms. Candidates should have 8-10 years of experience in native mobile applications and a proven track record in mobile architectures.

Responsibilities include evolving mobile capabilities, managing CI/CD processes, and ensuring high code quality. A strong background in Swift or Kotlin is essential, along with leadership in cross-team initiatives.

Qualifications

• 8–10+ years of experience in native mobile development.
• Deep expertise in either iOS (Swift) or Android (Kotlin).
• Proven track record in evolving mobile architectures.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of shared architecture for mobile apps.
• Own core mobile platform capabilities and security.
• Improve developer experience for mobile engineers.

Skills

Swift

Kotlin

Mobile CI/CD

Cross-team collaboration

Architectural design

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related

Tools

GitHub Actions

Bitrise

Job description

About Airwallex

Airwallex is the only unified payments and financial platform for global businesses. Powered by our unique combination of proprietary infrastructure and software, we empower over 200,000 businesses worldwide – including Brex, Rippling, Navan, Qantas, SHEIN and many more – with fully integrated solutions to manage everything from business accounts, payments, spend management and treasury, to embedded finance at a global scale.

Attributes We Value

We hire successful builders with founder‑like energy who want real impact, accelerated learning, and true ownership. You bring strong role‑related expertise and sharp thinking, and you’re motivated by our mission and operating principles. You move fast with good judgment, dig deep with curiosity, and make decisions from first principles, balancing speed and rigor.

You're humble and collaborative; turn zero‑to‑one ideas into real products, and you “get stuff done” end‑to‑end. You use AI to work smarter and solve problems faster. Here, you’ll tackle complex, high‑visibility problems with exceptional teammates and grow your career as we build the future of global banking. If that sounds like you, let’s build what’s next.

About the Mobile Foundations Team

The Mobile Foundations team sits at the core of Airwallex’s mobile stack. We build and evolve the shared architecture, libraries, and tooling that power our fully native iOS and Android apps.

Our apps help businesses manage global B2B payments, submit and approve expenses, and control both virtual and physical Airwallex cards—complete with seamless Apple Pay and Google Pay integration. On iOS, we work with Swift, SwiftUI, Combine, and async/await. On Android, we use Kotlin, AndroidX, Coroutines, Hilt, and the Jetpack ecosystem.

Mobile Foundations is a platform / horizontal team: we don’t just build features, we create the building blocks that enable product squads to ship faster, more reliably, and with a consistent, high‑quality user experience.

This role can be based in Singapore, Melbourne, or San Francisco.

Staff Mobile Engineer – Mobile Foundations

As a Staff Mobile Engineer on the Mobile Foundations team, you will lead the technical direction of our mobile platform across iOS and Android. You will design and evolve the core architecture, own critical shared components, and act as a multiplier for mobile engineers across product teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and evolve mobile architecture
  • Lead the design and evolution of the shared architecture for our native mobile apps, including navigation, state management, networking, offline strategies, and error handling.
  • Drive modularisation and clear boundaries between foundation modules and product features.
• Own core mobile platform capabilities
  • Own and maintain shared libraries and frameworks (e.g. design system components, analytics, feature flags, experimentation, authentication, payments, observability).
  • Be responsible for the application's authentication and authorization mechanisms.
  • Ensure these components are stable, well‑documented, and easy to adopt and extend by product teams.
• Improve security, reliability, performance, and observability
  • Drive mobile application security, including anti‑tampering measures, certificate pinning, and security best practices.
  • Define and track platform‑level metrics such as crash‑free sessions, ANRs, app start‑up time, bundle size, and network performance.
  • Partner with product teams to drive initiatives that improve reliability, performance, and overall mobile quality.
  • Strengthen end‑to‑end observability across mobile (logging, metrics, tracing, crash reporting) and use data to guide priorities.
• Elevate developer experience, CI/CD
  • Own and continuously improve our mobile CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitHub Actions, Bitrise), reducing build times, flakiness, and friction in releasing features.
  • Improve developer experience for mobile engineers through tooling, templates, documentation, and automation.
• Manage Mobile Release, Operational Health, and Best Practices
  • Own the end‑to‑end mobile release process across iOS and Android, ensuring timely and reliable delivery of new versions.
  • Establish clear guidelines and lead the on‑call rotation for critical platform‑level incidents, ensuring rapid response and resolution.
  • Define, document, and enforce mobile engineering best practices across the organization to maintain a high bar for code quality and platform consistency.
• Lead cross‑team technical initiatives
  • Drive cross‑squad projects (e.g. rollout of a new design system, major architectural changes, cross‑platform feature foundations) from problem definition through to rollout and adoption.
  • Align stakeholders (EMs, PMs, designers, backend/platform teams) around technical direction and trade‑offs.
• Be a hands‑on technical leader and mentor
  • Lead by example with clean, testable, well‑structured code on either iOS or Android, while setting standards across both platforms.
  • Provide technical mentorship and guidance to senior and mid‑level engineers through design reviews, pairing, and coaching.
  • Contribute to and influence hiring, onboarding, and the growth of the mobile engineering community at Airwallex.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• 8–10+ years of experience building native mobile applications on iOS or Android, including at least 3+ years operating at a Senior or Staff level.
• Deep expertise in
  • iOS: Swift, SwiftUI, Combine, async/await, or
  • Android: Kotlin, AndroidX, Jetpack, Coroutines, Hilt with commercial knowledge of both platforms.
• Proven track record leading cross‑team technical initiatives and evolving mobile architectures (e.g. modularisation, design systems, networking, offline support, or similar).
• Strong focus on code quality and reliability:
  • Designs for testability and maintainability.
  • Writes high‑quality automated tests and uses coverage meaningfully (not just as a number).
• Experience owning and improving mobile CI/CD pipelines (e.g. GitHub Actions, Bitrise), including build optimisation, test stability, and release workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority:
  • Aligns engineers, PMs, and designers around technical direction and makes pragmatic trade‑offs.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience defining and driving a mobile platform roadmap, balancing foundational work with product delivery needs.
• Prior ownership of shared mobile libraries or frameworks used by multiple product teams at scale.
• Hands‑on experience with
  • Design systems and component libraries on mobile.
  • Analytics, experimentation, and feature flagging on mobile.
  • Observability tooling (e.g. Crashlytics, Sentry, logging/metrics platforms).
• Experience in domains such as payments, fintech, or B2B SaaS, especially where reliability, security, and regulatory requirements are critical.
• Experience mentoring other senior engineers and playing a key role in hiring and growing mobile teams.
• Contributions to the mobile community (open source, talks, blog posts) or evidence of thought leadership in mobile architecture and foundations.

Equal Opportunity

Airwallex is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity and anyone seeking employment at Airwallex is considered based on merit, qualifications, competence and talent. We don’t regard color, religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, ancestry, citizenship, sex, marital or family status, disability, gender, or any other legally protected status when making our hiring decisions. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.

Compensation

Compensation Range: $180K - $300K