Senior Software Engineer - Mobile Platform

Skydio•San Mateo, CA

18d•$190,000 - $250,000

About The Position

Skydio is seeking a Senior Android Engineer who possesses a product engineering mindset. This role involves working at the intersection of Skydio's autonomous flight engine, connected cloud services, and physical controller hardware to develop products that enhance drone operator capabilities. The engineer will contribute to various aspects of the user experience, from dispatch-to-flight workflows to real-time situational awareness and mission planning, shaping the interaction with advanced autonomous drones. This position is described as building the command interface for a new category of intelligent machines, going beyond typical mobile development. The Edge Experience team is responsible for the entire pilot experience on Skydio's controllers, encompassing the radio link, video streaming pipeline, and product interfaces used in the field. The team emphasizes incremental shipping, automation of critical paths, and data-driven decision-making. Their work directly impacts real hardware, airspace, and missions, requiring software that is reliable, performant, and intuitive for high-stress situations.

Requirements

5+ years professional software engineering experience with Android AOSP
Substantial work in Android (Kotlin/Java)
Some work in C++ is preferred
Deep experience with the Android NDK and JNI — you've built and debugged native libraries that ship in production Android apps
Proficiency in Kotlin and the modern Android ecosystem (Coroutines, Jetpack/Architecture Components, Gradle)
Previous experience with one or more graphics APIs such as Vulkan, OpenGL ES, or Metal
Strong debugging and profiling skills across the native/managed boundary (ASan, Perfetto, Android Studio profilers)
Experience with low-latency network communication (UDP, WebRTC, or custom protocols)
Proficiency in Linux development environments

Nice To Haves

Shipped mobile apps that integrate with IoT devices or robots
Experience with Bazel build system
AOSP or Android platform/framework-level experience
Familiarity with video codecs (H.264/H.265), camera pipelines, or real-time media processing

Responsibilities

Design intuitive, high-performance operator interfaces for real-time drone control, video streaming, and mission management
Work cross-functionally with autonomy, firmware, cloud, and product teams to translate complex system capabilities into simple, reliable user experiences
Architect and build product features that bridge our C++ autonomy engine, Android application layer, and cloud services — owning the full vertical from native libraries through JNI/NDK to the Kotlin UI
Build and leverage AI-powered agentic workflows to accelerate engineering velocity — from automated testing and code generation to intelligent developer tooling
Champion the product engineer mindset: deeply understand operator needs, think end-to-end from hardware to cloud, and own outcomes — not just outputs
Mentor engineers and raise the bar on software quality, system design, and user-centric thinking