Android Engineer

About Blendle

Blendle is the biggest platform of premium journalism in the Netherlands.

Blendle is basically an iTunes for Dutch newspapers, an app and a website where readers can buy articles.

Blendle fulfils an important task Journalism is a vital component of any society, but even the greatest newspapers and magazines continuously show a decrease in sales. Blendle offers a new revenue stream which will help ensure the continuity of great journalism.

Position

Blendle is looking for an experienced Android Developer. Our ultimate goal is to provide a seamless and fantastic user experience for journalism. We believe a combination of stories that change your perspective on what's going on and butter-smooth apps will help people to look at the world differently.

A second goal is to build an organization that helps people grow in their skills. You can read more on how we do this in our public handbook. This is why we spend a ton of time on coaching and feedback within Blendle. We'll help you set audacious goals and grow new skills.

This might be a great job for you if:

• You have experience working on a number of mobile apps, preferably apps with scale
• Your passion and skill set is predominantly focused on Android, but bonus points for having shipped both Android as well as iOS apps
• Helping people get better at their jobs makes you happy

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the challenges we work on, and how we approach them:

• We continuously work to improve the reading experience in our clients. Each article is presented in the publishers own signature style, down to the smallest details. When a user opens an article, we apply a style document to the text of the article—defining every detail from the fonts used in the byline to the line-height for the kicker. It is imperative to the quality of the user experience that this does not lead to any noticeable delays when opening an article. We had to work hard on optimising code for the parsing pipeline, rendering the text and calculating the layout of the article to keep everything running at 60 FPS.
• Blendle Audio - We worked very hard to build the best listening experience for our users. The audio content is dynamically generated to surprise each user with a personalised greeting in the introduction. The backend provides us with a set of audio segments that form the intro, we stitch the segments together locally. We put a lot of effort in creating a smooth user experience for audio, we allow the user to control the audio in a lot of different ways that are all fluid and intuitive.
• Design - An important part of how we present everything, is of course the design of the product. We work closely with our design team to create the best user experience possible. 

A typical day of working in Blendle's Android application could involve:

• You will implement and analyse the results of AB tests to continuously improve our platform with our Data Analyst
• You maintain our existing code base, work on simplifying the codebase, and spot and fix issues when they arise
• Collaboration with our Designers and Experience to make experience for new users even more delightful
• Work together with the Product Manager to translate the functional requirements for a feature into a technical design
• Coming up with systematic solutions to problems instead of focusing on one-off fixes
• Delivering your implementation with good test coverage
• Discussing technical challenges with your team
• Pairing on a feature with a colleague
• Delivering your implementation with good test coverage (preferably test-driven)
• Check out and learn more from one of the Android Engineers https://www.wykorijnsburger.nl/dev/2019/04/30/shared-element-transition/

Android Engineer will be part of a small team responsible for the evolution and backlog of Blendle Android application. We almost moved away from Java to Kotlin. Also several libraries that we use right now: Android Jetpack Component, RxJava (old code), Glide, Groupie, Coroutine, Dagger, Retrofit and etc.

Your qualification

• 5+ years of production Android experience, writing, releasing, and maintaining mobile code with scale
• Solid expertise in Kotlin and Java. As of August 2019 we have 75% Kotlin and 25% of Java in our code base
• Experience analyzing features in production, using analytics and experiments
• Strong focus on high-quality mobile UI experiences
• Strong knowledge of common design patterns
• Deep understanding of Android SDKs. Good to have experience with Android Jetpack component

Will be a plus

Experience with automated testing

What we offer

• A full-time job that you’re free to plan into your week however you’d like
• Full travel reimbursement
• A MacBook / Windows laptop 
• Freedom to work anywhere, everywhere
• Free and delicious lunches
• Free weekly massages
• Flexible holidays
• An awesome team of young and ambitious people that all share the same passion: to make journalism accessible and help people make better choices
• A location in Utrecht, the heart of the Netherlands, at a 3-minute walk from the central station
• Very generous parental / birth leave for daddy
• And other perks

Additional details

Why Blendle?

1. Blendle fulfils an important task - Journalism is a vital component of any society, but newspapers and magazines continuously show a decrease in sales. Therefore, Blendle offers a new revenue stream which will help ensure the continuity of great journalism.
2. People pay us because we spend so much time on crafting a better user experience for reading and listening. The product you get to spend your time on building is enjoyed by over 1 million users worldwide.
3. We're moving fast! We're experimenting continuously with new technology, and aren't afraid to try new stuff in a small part of our app or API to test the waters. Our infrastructure is built with speed in mind, so we have fast cycles where we build, ship, validate and iterate. You get to play with new stuff and learn, and we get all the benefits from using state of the art software.
4. Freedom - We believe that you are the best person to decide when and where you work. Huibert starts his day with a run and by opening his laptop in his garden in The Hague and Jean regularly spends the night talking to himself in our chat program whilst coding. We assume you know what works best for you, so you don’t need us to make the rules.
5. We find learning really important. Every quarter we reserve three full days for the whole company to work on whatever new thing you'd like. Some of our best features originated from these sessions.