Mobile Tech Lead in London

We are looking for an App leader who is passionate about building brilliant experiences for families as well as great teams. This is a hands-on role where you will balance delivery with people management and development, guide our app engineering efforts, and support a small team of talented engineers as we continue to grow.

About Yoto

Yoto is a screen-free interactive audio platform for kids. We make carefully connected audio players that kids control, with no microphones, cameras or ads. We have a catalogue of audio that inspires creative play and learning with 1,000+ titles in our card store from top creators, publishers and labels – think Disney, Marvel, Roald Dahl and Universal Music. We also create Yoto Originals like BrainBots.

We are on a mission to be the soundtrack of childhood and help families on their own unique adventures. By creating products that inspire independent play, we help families discover and grow with an inspiring world of audio.

Core App at Yoto

Our Core App team is made up of 4 app engineers and one QA across Android and iOS. The app is designed to support parents by giving them access to their whole content library, enabling them to make their own content, set player settings, remote control the Yoto player, play content on their phone and in the car via Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, and purchase more content via our Discover hub in the app.

Our codebases are written entirely in Kotlin and Swift, and most of our UI is now in Jetpack Compose or SwiftUI. We are constantly looking for ways to improve and modernise these codebases. Our user base is expanding rapidly, and we aim to grow the team sustainably to scale our codebase and support new features while refining existing work. We are particularly committed to improving performance and stability, as evidenced by our excellent crash-free rate and App Store reviews.

What you will be doing:

• Lead and support a team of app engineers (Core App team), helping them grow and do their best work.
• Line-management of 4 app engineers and 1 QA.
• Work with the Lead Software Engineers and Product Manager to set the direction for the Yoto apps and ensure we are building scalable, high-quality features.
• Collaborate across teams to shape our roadmap and prioritise the right things for families using Yoto around the world.
• Ensure quality through testing (unit, integration, E2E) and robust development practices.
• Take part in hiring, onboarding, and shaping how we work as a team.
• Contribute to wider technical decisions around architecture, tooling and ways of working.

What you will bring:

• Experience leading engineers, and a people-first mindset.
• Proficient in giving and receiving continuous feedback and running annual performance reviews.
• Ability to coach engineers to be the best they can be.
• A delivery-focused mindset, balancing people, process, technical and product viewpoints.
• Stakeholder management.
• Strong communication skills both written and verbal.
• Proficiency with modern app development and tooling.
• Strong experience in native app development, with a solid grasp of app architecture and design patterns (MVVM, MVP, MVC).
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced scale-up environment, where things move quickly.
• Confident collaborating across disciplines and communicating your ideas clearly.
• A practical, thoughtful approach to delivering high-quality, user-centred features.

Salary: £90,000 – £100,000 based on experience.

What you can expect from Yoto:

• Flexibility: Hybrid working – expectation of 1 day a week in our London office, but you are welcome to come in more. Take advantage of our 'work from anywhere' policy to work from a different location for up to 6 weeks every year. Summer Hours policy to use between June and August.
• Financial: Receive Income Protection, covering long-term sickness for up to 2 years and company sick pay that increases with length of service. Life Assurance cover from day one. Workplace Pension offering up to 3% employer contributions following probation. Generous employee referral bonus scheme.
• Health & Wellness: Private Medical Insurance via Aviva, or a Wellbeing Allowance, access to 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) through WeCare, unlimited access to Dental advice via Toothfairy, Bike to work scheme.
• Time Off: 25 days of holiday per year, plus bank holidays, a birthday off, and 1 extra day each year after 2 years up to 5 days. After 4 years, eligible for sabbatical policy of up to 3 months unpaid.
• Helping Families: Variety of family-friendly leave, including enhanced maternity, paternity, adoption, fertility, pregnancy loss and carers leave. Unlock savings with our workplace nursery scheme.
• People & Planet: Up to 2 volunteer days a year. Book Allowance up to £50 a year to support professional development.
• Fun Perks: You receive your very own Yoto player and starter pack of cards! Regular company socials and celebrations, including our annual YotoFest!

Equity and Diversity

At Yoto, we love creating a world where childhood is rich with discovery and joy. We are also passionate about building a workplace where everyone can thrive – professionally and personally. We value flexibility and give our team the freedom to balance life and work in ways that suit them.

We are committed to fostering a safe, diverse, and inclusive environment where all individuals, regardless of their background, feel valued and supported. Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion group holds bi-monthly forums to elevate diverse voices and perspectives, ensuring everyone at Yoto feels heard, respected and appreciated.

We invite candidates from all walks of life to explore opportunities with us and join a company that champions flexibility, equity, and inclusion.