Principal Mobile SDK Engineer (Navigation)

We are looking for a highly experienced Principal Mobile SDK Engineer to lead the architecture and development of our proprietary Navigation SDK. 

Unlike typical app development, this role involves building the core engine that powers navigation experiences. You will be responsible for wrapping and extending open-source native mapping engines, integrating our custom routing APIs, and exposing a clean, robust, and developer-friendly API surface for both Android and iOS platforms. 

You will work directly with the founders to turn our navigation logic into a reusable, high-performance SDK product. 

🛠 Responsibilities 

• SDK Architecture: Design and implement a unified navigation SDK architecture for Android (Kotlin) and iOS (Swift) that wraps underlying native mapping libraries. 

• Core Navigation Logic: Implement complex logic for turn-by-turn navigation, including route snapping, off-route detection, rerouting, and ETA calculation. 

• API Design: Craft intuitive, idiomatic, and thread-safe APIs for client developers. You are building tools for other engineers, so Developer Experience (DX) is paramount. 

• Performance Optimization: Optimize for battery usage, memory management (tile caching), and CPU efficiency during active navigation sessions. 

• Sensor Fusion: Work with raw GPS, accelerometer, and gyroscope data to improve location accuracy and handle "tunnel" or weak-signal scenarios. 

• Release Engineering: Manage the CI/CD pipeline for SDK distribution (Maven Central, CocoaPods, Swift Package Manager) and versioning. 

• 10+ Years of Engineering Experience: Deep expertise in mobile development lifecycles. 

• Dual Native Proficiency: High proficiency in both Kotlin (Android) and Swift (iOS). You must be comfortable context-switching between platforms. 

• SDK/Library Development: Proven experience building and maintaining SDKs or shared libraries consumed by third-party applications. You understand semantic versioning, backward compatibility, and ABI stability. 

• System Design: Experience designing clean interfaces (Facade pattern, Delegate pattern, Observer pattern) to hide complex internal logic. 

• Background Execution: Deep understanding of Android Foreground Services and iOS Background Modes (Location Updates, Audio) to ensure navigation survives when the app is minimized. 

Specialized Skills (Highly Preferred):

• GIS & Mapping: Experience with the internals of major Mapping or Navigation SDKs. Understanding of Vector Tiles (OpenGL/Metal rendering), GeoJSON, and coordinate projection systems (Mercator vs. WGS84). 

• Geometry Math: Familiarity with computational geometry (calculating bearings, distances, polygon intersections, and line snapping). 

• Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP): Experience or interest in migrating shared business logic to KMP to reduce code duplication between Android and iOS. 

• Binary Compatibility: Understanding of ProGuard/R8 rules (Android) and Module interfaces (iOS) to prevent symbol conflicts.