Staff Software Engineer IOS

The RealReal•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

The RealReal is looking for a highly experienced and self-motivated Staff Software Engineer (iOS) to join our Mobile Engineering team. In this role, you will help build and evolve the mobile applications used by millions of customers as well as internal tools used by our operations teams. You will work closely with Product, Design, Backend, and other mobile engineers to deliver high-quality mobile experiences that support The RealReal’s marketplace and operational workflows. As a Staff Engineer, you will play a key role in driving the technical direction and architecture of our mobile platforms, ensuring our iOS and Android applications remain scalable, performant, and maintainable as the business grows. You will help define best practices, guide architectural decisions, and lead complex initiatives that improve the reliability and velocity of mobile development across the organization. Our mobile apps power core customer experiences including shopping, selling, and account management, as well as internal applications used by teams supporting authentication, logistics, and operations. In this role, you will collaborate across multiple teams to deliver seamless mobile experiences that support both customer engagement and internal productivity. This role is ideal for a seasoned mobile engineer who thrives in a collaborative environment, enjoys solving complex technical challenges, and is passionate about building high-quality mobile products at scale. You will also mentor engineers across the team, contribute to improving engineering processes, and help drive the adoption of modern mobile technologies and development practices. Your contributions will directly impact The RealReal’s ability to deliver best-in-class mobile experiences while supporting the operational systems that power our luxury resale marketplace.

Requirements

7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 5+ years dedicated to iOS development, ideally thriving in agile or startup-like environments where you have owned end-to-end features.
Deep expertise in modern iOS development utilizing Swift, SwiftUI, Swift Concurrency (async/await), Combine, and Core Data , alongside seamless integration of RESTful APIs and GraphQL services.
Proven ability to design scalable, modular mobile architectures and champion comprehensive unit and UI testing strategies to ensure high-performance code.
Track record of collaborating closely with Android and Backend engineers to define shared APIs, platform standards, and ensure feature parity across the mobile ecosystem.
Ability to mentor engineers, influence architectural direction, and take ownership of mobile performance, observability, and long-term reliability.

Nice To Haves

Architect and develop mobile applications that interact seamlessly with external hardware, IoT systems, and retail peripherals (scanners, cameras, payment devices).
Champion mobile platform modernization and technical debt reduction , while improving engineering velocity through CI/CD pipelines (Fastlane, GitHub Actions) and internal tooling.
Design and implement AI/ML-powered features, intelligent product recommendations , and experimentation frameworks to support data-informed product decisions.
Leverage exposure to distributed backend architectures (such as Elixir or Ruby) to build robust, service-oriented integrations.

Responsibilities

Own the technical direction and architecture of our iOS platform, ensuring scalability, reliability, and long-term maintainability
Lead the development of advanced iOS features using Swift and SwiftUI, delivering high-performance and polished customer experiences
Drive platform modernization initiatives, including modularization, Swift Concurrency (async/await), and adoption of modern iOS architectural patterns
Define and enforce mobile engineering standards including architecture guidelines, coding conventions, testing strategy, documentation, and best practices
Lead initiatives to improve engineering velocity and developer experience through CI/CD automation, build optimization, and tooling improvements (GitHub Actions, Fastlane, etc.)
Establish and expand automated testing strategies including unit testing, UI testing, snapshot testing, and performance monitoring to ensure high product quality
Collaborate with backend and infrastructure teams to design and integrate scalable APIs and distributed systems using GraphQL and REST
Drive data-driven and AI-powered product experiences, including personalization, intelligent search, experimentation frameworks, and recommendation systems
Partner closely with Product, Design, Data Science, and Analytics teams to translate business goals into scalable technical solutions
Lead the evolution of the mobile architecture and design systems, promoting reusable components and consistent user experience across applications
Improve observability, monitoring, and performance optimization across the iOS platform to ensure reliability at scale
Build experiences that scale across Apple device form factors, including iPhone and iPad, while maintaining strong accessibility and ADA compliance