Mobile Software Engineer - Architecture & Core Platform

Join the future of news

We’re on a mission to deliver riveting storytelling for all of America. At The Washington Post, you’ll help reinvent news. Our work is driven by a deep investigative spirit and enhanced by innovation to bring audiences closer to the stories that matter most.

About Our Team

The Washington Post is powered by the passion and talent of our people. It takes all of us to reinvent news. Beyond our award-winning News and Opinions teams, we work across many departments, including Brand & Events, Communications, Customer Care, Engineering & Product, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Marketing & Advertising, Print Operations, and Sales.

Why This Role Matters

The Washington Post is seeking an experienced Mobile Software Engineer to drive the technical evolution of our flagship mobile applications. In this role, you will focus on core mobile architecture, application performance, modularity, and cross-cutting platform systems. Our native apps drive the majority of our digital reach and serve millions of daily readers, making app reliability, fluid responsiveness, and maintainable software design central to our engineering mission. You will be responsible for defining structural patterns, eliminating technical debt, optimizing foundation-level workflows (networking, caching, state orchestration), and safely integrating high-impact domain modules - ranging from reader experiences and personalization to native monetization frameworks.

What Motivates You

• You are passionate about clean system design, modular codebases, and establishing design standards that make multi-team feature development faster and safer.
• You care deeply about fundamental app metrics—cold start times, smooth 60/120 fps rendering, battery efficiency, and low memory footprints.
• You enjoy solving systemic, cross-cutting engineering problems that impact the entire application stack, not just isolated user interfaces.
• You appreciate that third-party systems and revenue mechanisms are integral to running a premier media operation, and you relish the challenge of isolating external dependencies behind strict, testable abstractions.
• You are eager to work with modern native patterns (Swift, Kotlin, declarative UI) and explore shared architecture paradigms to streamline cross-platform capabilities.

How You'll Support the Mission

• Design, implement, and maintain core mobile architecture patterns, shared foundational frameworks, and modular dependency graphs across the application.
• Drive app-wide technical initiatives: optimize cold/warm startup times, reduce memory and binary footprint, and eliminate main-thread bottlenecks using profiling tools.
• Establish robust abstraction layers, adapter patterns, and dependency injection strategies to isolate high-risk third-party SDKs, revenue systems, and analytics vendors.
• Partner with product, backend, and feature teams to establish standardized API contracts, networking patterns, data persistence schemes, and caching strategies.
• Lead architectural design discussions, author RFCs, define code quality benchmarks, and conduct thorough peer code reviews.
• Support high-impact vertical integrations (such as native monetization, audio/video playback, and content feeds) by designing clean hook points and lifecycle management pipelines.
• Ensure app compliance with platform privacy policies, sandbox requirements, and operating system updates across Apple and Google ecosystems.
• Champion automated testing standards, CI/CD pipeline reliability, and contract testing across client-server boundaries.

The Skills and Experience You Bring

• Design, implement, and maintain core mobile architecture patterns, shared foundational frameworks, and modular dependency graphs across the application.
• Establish robust abstraction layers, adapter patterns, and dependency injection strategies to isolate high-risk third-party SDKs, revenue systems, and analytics vendors.
• Lead architectural design discussions, author RFCs, define code quality benchmarks, and conduct thorough peer code reviews.
• Champion automated testing standards, CI/CD pipeline reliability, and contract testing across client-server boundaries.

Qualifications

• Bachelorʼs degree in Computer Science, engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of professional mobile engineering experience shipping large-scale, production-grade applications.
• Strong proficiency in modern native mobile development (Swift/iOS; familiarity with Android or Kotlin Multiplatform is a strong asset).
• Deep understanding of architectural paradigms (MVVM, Clean Architecture, Unidirectional Data Flow / MVI, modularization) and design patterns.
• Proven track record diagnosing and resolving system-level performance issues (concurrency, memory leaks, frame drops, network overhead).
• Experience architecting SDK integration layers, wrapper libraries, or plugin systems that protect host app stability and crash-free rates.
• Solid grasp of client-server API design, schema definition (REST, Protocol Buffers/gRPC, or GraphQL), and offline-first data synchronization.
• Demonstrated commitment to code hygiene, automated testing (unit, integration, snapshot/UI), and continuous integration workflows.

 

Collaboration makes us stronger. That’s why our offices are designed with open layouts, modern technology, and easy access to transportation. With certain exceptions for newsgathering and business travel, we work on-site five days a week.

Compensation and Benefits

Wherever you are in your life or career, The Washington Post offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits for every step of your journey:

• Competitive medical, dental and vision coverage

• Company-paid pension and 401(k) match

• Three weeks of vacation and up to three weeks of paid sick leave

• Nine paid holidays and two personal days

• 20 weeks paid parental leave for any new parent

• Robust mental health resources

• Backup care and caregiver concierge services

• Gender affirming services

• Pet insurance

• Free Post digital subscription

• Leadership and career development programs

Benefits may vary based on the job, full-time or part-time schedule, location, and collectively bargained status.

The salary range for this position is:

$98,800 - $164,600 Annual

The actual salary within this range will depend on individual skills, experience, and qualifications as they relate to specific job requirements. This position may be eligible for a bonus or incentive program, and a member of the Talent Acquisition team will discuss bonus payment terms and conditions during the interview process.