Software Engineer, Android

About SmartNews

News should be for everyone. But not when it’s buried under cat videos—or when your internet is spotty—or when it’s in a filter bubble. That’s why we created SmartNews.

Our mission is to discover and deliver quality stories to the world. To accomplish this:

We are a machine learning company. News should be impartial, trending and trustworthy. Our algorithms evaluate millions of articles, social signals and human interactions to deliver the top 0.01% of stories that matter most, right now.

We love content. News should be sustainable. We support quality journalism and respect publishers by sharing article traffic and revenue.

Please note that we will only consider you for one application at a time.

Position

News Mobile's mission is to drive user engagement by defining how users access and interact with their news across regions.

As part of the News Mobile team, you will define, prototype, implement and optimise user-facing product features for Japan and the US, such as the new daily News Digest feature to our US users to help them further access the most important news of the day.

You will collaborate closely with other engineers, product managers and designers from different regions. Curiosity and a proactive mindset are also most welcomed, as you will have the opportunity to share and own your ideas. Engineering-driven initiates are also encouraged to further accelerate product growth.

You will be working with exciting teams from JP and the US, where you can shape the future of new products by building and iterating on new solutions while ensuring scalability, performance, reliability, security, and many other good engineering practices, especially for the Android team.

Role and Responsibilities

• Lead the design, execution, and performance optimization of an Android application used by tens of millions of users
• Closely and proactively collaborate with global cross-functional teams (product managers, designers, data scientists, backend engineers, etc.) to build new mobile product features
• Optimize mobile platform with the latest Android and Kotlin technology to improve user experience and mobile engineering productivity
• Analyze and optimize UI and application code for efficiency and performance
• Rapid prototype development to visualize impactful product for the user and the business
• Proactive, innovative, creative technical problem solving with a focus on metrics and user experience

Technology

• Language: Kotlin, Java
• Libraries: Firebase, Epoxy, Dagger2, OKHTTP, Coil, Timber, Jackson, detekt
• Tools: GitHub, Slack, CircleCI
• Issue Management: JIRA
• Document Management: Notion

Your qualification

• 3-5+ years of experience with Android application development
• Experience with coding in both Kotlin and Java
• Experience building maintainable and testable code bases, including API design and unit testing techniques
• Experience with multithreading programming and mobile memory management
• Business-level communication in English
• Good communication and proactivity

Will be a plus

• Experience developing Android applications from start to finish
• Experience with other programming languages
• Experience with mobile CI/CD, ideally, on a customised cloud setup
• Experience with Android performance tools
• Experience with applying unified architectures in a large-scale mobile project
• Familiar with design patterns and architecture design (e.g. UML)
• Experience working with cross-functional teams

What we offer

• Support program for employee’s self-development and well-being
• Healthy lunches are prepared on-site daily in our SmartKitchen. You can even see the cooks at work!
• Need a pick-me-up? Stop by ChikyuCoffee, our in-house coffee shop, and get a cup of gourmet coffee, espresso-based beverage, or other seasonal drink!
• SmartNews provides all healthcare and social insurance benefits required by Japanese labor law

Visa Sponsorship and Relocation Support

For candidates who meet eligibility requirements, SmartNews can sponsor visas.

To support a smooth transition for candidates who are moving to Japan from overseas, SmartNews partners with a travel service provider.