Manager - Mobile Development and Engineering

Costco•Issaquah, WA

22h

About The Position

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite its size and explosive international expansion, Costco continues to provide a family, employee-centric atmosphere where employees thrive and succeed. The company culture values its employees and members first, is known for its generosity and community service, and actively sponsors volunteering opportunities. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment undergoing exciting transformation efforts, building the next generation retail environment. As a member of the IT Management Team, this role involves managing, developing, and leading a team of employees, overseeing team performance and deliverables. The Manager is also responsible for the development and execution of the team’s strategic vision and plan, ensuring alignment with company and IT Division goals. The Mobile Engineering Manager will specifically lead the end-to-end delivery of Costco's suite of mobile applications on both iOS and Android, working with Engineering teams, user experience designers, and key stakeholders to build impactful mobile applications. The ideal candidate will possess product management acumen, experience building and leading productive teams, a passion for member delivery, and expertise in creating engaging, mobile-optimized experiences. This role serves as the primary conduit between employees and upper leadership, communicating and modeling company values and fostering a culture of engagement, trust, and open communication.

Requirements

10+ years of professional experience developing native mobile applications on iOS (Swift/Objective-C) and/or Android (Kotlin/Java).
5+ years of experience in engineering management, including leading teams, coaching, performance management, and resource planning.
Demonstrated success delivering mobile applications end-to-end in enterprise or complex environments.
Strong understanding of modern mobile architectures and design patterns (e.g., MVVM, VIPER, Clean Architecture).
Proficiency with mobile UI/UX principles, accessibility standards, and platform-specific guidelines.
Experience with RESTful APIs, GraphQL, Firebase, mobile analytics, and push notification services.
Hands-on knowledge of CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Bitrise, Jenkins), automated testing frameworks, and app deployment processes (App Store Connect, Google Play Console).
Solid grasp of mobile security best practices, performance optimization, and monitoring tools (Crashlytics, Firebase Performance, etc.).
Strong collaboration, communication, and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence and build trust across teams.
Strategic thinking and the ability to translate business goals into actionable engineering roadmaps.
Passion for building member-first, high-quality mobile experiences that drive meaningful business value.
Deep understanding and proficiency in building mobile apps from scratch using Swift/Objective-C.
Desire and ability to expand expertise into additional mobile languages.
Expertise in designing testable software (Unit/Functional/End-to-End) and building large scale, complex applications.
Self-motivated/learning mindset with strong communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
Passionate about writing clean, well-organized, and production-ready code.
Desire to build a larger in-house team and manage a group of Developers over time.
User-centric focused and embrace Agile practice.
HIPAA Training and Supervisors Orientation (within 30 days of hire).
Leadership Development 101 (within one year).
Costco Pay Policies (within 90 days of promotion).
Proof of authorization to work in the United States (if hired).

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
A portfolio of Apps or SDKs already built and in the App Store or Google Play.
Strong software engineering management experience preferred.
Proficient in Google Workspace applications, including Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Gmail.
Some experience with/working knowledge of Java/Kotlin and Python is preferred.

Responsibilities

When achieving benchmarks and goals, use methods/strategies that are consistent with the Code of Ethics and the Standard of Ethics for Managers and Supervisors.
Always leads by example.
Appropriately handles employee concerns and follows through to resolution.
Provides and ensures staff provides an exceptional member experience.
Ensures proper department coverage (writing schedule and break aids if needed).
Understands department budget, able to research and explain budget variances.
Coaches and mentors’ employees to provide support and guidance.
Has regular open and honest conversations with employees to discuss work performance and career development.
Identifies learning opportunities to strengthen employee knowledge, skill, and ability.
Regularly shares information with employees via meetings and one-on-one conversations.
Successfully navigates difficult conversations with employees, members, and suppliers.
Listens, expresses empathy, and adapts to get points across.
Addresses issues immediately to ensure a timely resolution and to avoid escalating the situation.
Consistently demonstrates business knowledge during interactions with senior management.
Demonstrates sound judgment, taking a partner when necessary.
Ability to maintain self-control in the face of hostility or provocation or in intense, hectic situations.
Encourages different approaches and ideas to work and to accomplish goals.
Seeks employee input.
Takes the time to get to know or reach out to candidates who show potential that may not come forward on their own.
Takes measures to ensure employee and member information is kept confidential and adheres to IS security policy.
Manages, mentors, and develops a high-performing team of native iOS and Android Engineers.
Takes ownership for team development and growth, including setting goals and objectives, identifying skill gaps, facilitating training, career planning, providing regular feedback, handling appraisals, managing rewards and recognitions to the team.
Oversees the complete lifecycle of mobile application development—from requirements and design through development, testing, release, and maintenance.
Develops and executes the strategic vision for mobile platforms, ensuring alignment with company and IT Division objectives.
Helps Engineering teams establish and achieve objectives and key results in desktop, mobile, and other form factors.
Partners with Product Management, UX/UI, QA, Architecture, and business stakeholders to deliver engaging mobile experiences that create measurable impact for members.
Provides guidance on engineering best practices, architecture standards, coding quality, performance, and security.
Monitors team output, maintains delivery timelines, and ensures high-quality implementation of features and fixes.
Acts as the key conduit between employees and upper leadership, models company values, and fosters a culture of engagement, trust, and transparency.
Implements and refines processes for CI/CD, code reviews, automated testing, and quality assurance to improve efficiency and product reliability.
Drives innovation in mobile technologies and user experience, ensuring the applications remain intuitive, modern, and member-focused.
Oversees staffing, hiring, onboarding, and professional development to support growth and long-term team success.
Owns the stability, performance, quality assurance, and automation goals of all the products and platform services that are required for the success of Costco mobile app.
Collaborates proactively with multiple distributed value streams, vendors, service providers; and ensures product artifacts (stories, epics, features, acceptance criteria, etc.) that are pertinent for the mission and strategic objectives are completed as planned.
Partners closely with Business, Dev, SRE teams to identify the environment requirements for the performance goals of the projects and maintain an efficient CI/CD pipeline.
Takes responsibility for foundational libraries, frameworks, and dev tools that support the mobile app and the BFF layers.
Works with Digital development teams for safe use of libraries, frameworks, and dev tools.
Oversees the security and compliance of the mobile app.
Establishes consistency of performance measurement, observation, and tooling approaches across Engineering teams and products.
Contributes code to streamline performance and remove bottlenecks.
Evaluates the performance rigor of Engineering teams and works with SRE to reduce complexity.
Writes specifications and understands performance trade-offs and risks.
Influences others and represents technical insight about customer experience to Engineers.
Helps debug performance issues and produce high-quality code to fix them.
Provides code reviews for performance-related patches.
Spends a significant amount of time mentoring others and providing cross-team input.
Drives the team to ensure on-time delivery, quality improvement KPIs.
Communicates effectively to different stakeholders on the project progress at different time lines (weekly/bi-weekly/monthly etc.).
Collaborates with customers, other managers, team leads to resolve any team blockers, and brings up best practices, solutions.
Oversees the hiring, managing attrition, and talent retention for the team.
Takes ownership for building innovation culture in the team and drives the team to bring up new solutions to improve the quality and efficiency.
Supports Digital pods in preparing short term and long-term project goals as aligned to organizational directions; drives the team to realize the goals.

Benefits

paid time off
health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance
health care reimbursement account
dependent care assistance plan
short-term disability and long-term disability insurance
AD&D insurance
life insurance
401(k)
stock purchase plan to eligible employees
Bonus eligible
Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) eligible