Principal Engineer Android

This role is offered on a UK employment contract. Candidates must be based in the UK as we are unable to support remote working from outside the country due to local employment and tax legislation.

This is the Principal-level technical authority for Deltatre's Android Product Engineering team operating on AXIS and DIVA. This is a senior individual-contributor role, as the Principal Engineer leads through technical expertise, domain knowledge, and strategic influence. Your authority is technical, exercised through architectural decisions, code review, and the way you raise the standard around you.

You will partner with the Technical Director to define long-term Android architectural direction across the product portfolio, set engineering standards, and act as the deep technical authority across multiple Android subsystems. The work spans architectural integrity, modernisation of the Android stack, and influencing how other Android engineers think about quality at scale.

Responsibilities

• Technical leadership
• Partner with the Technical Director to define long-term Android architectural direction, technical standards, and technology choices
• Own the architectural integrity and scalability of the Android platform across products — system design, integration patterns, data architecture
• Evaluate emerging Android technologies and propose adoption strategies aligned with product and business goals
• Drive technical innovation and continuous improvement within the Android engineering function
• Set the bar for engineering quality through code and design reviews, mentorship, and example
• Define and promote best practices in Android development — CI/CD, testing, monitoring, documentation
• Guide teams in resolving complex Android-specific technical challenges, balancing short-term delivery needs with long-term sustainability
• Domain ownership
• Act as the technical authority within the Android domain, across multiple subsystems and products
• Develop deep domain knowledge of the Android ecosystem at Deltatre's scale
• Ensure consistency in Android design and implementation practices across teams
• Collaboration and influence
• Collaborate with Product Managers, Designers, Tech Leads, and other stakeholders to align Android technical and product roadmaps
• Influence and mentor Lead Engineers and senior Android developers across the organisation
• Participate in high-level planning and decision-making with senior engineering and product leaders

Requirements

• 8+ years' software engineering experience with at least 3 years at Principal, Lead, or Architect level
• Substantial production experience with Kotlin and modern Android development, with working command of Java
• Deep architectural understanding of the Android platform — lifecycle, memory, threading, performance, accessibility
• Demonstrated experience leading architecture on cloud-connected, high‑availability consumer applications
• Substantial experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and how mobile apps interact with them
• Demonstrated technical leadership without people management — code quality governance, mentorship, architectural decision authority
• Comfortable communicating complex Android technical topics to non‑technical stakeholders
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and DevOps practices
• Background in OTT, video streaming, or B2C consumer apps at scale
• Experience with React Native or other cross‑platform mobile frameworks
• Familiarity with sports / media tech sector
• Experience with media‑specific concerns — video playback, DRM, encoding
• Experience mentoring senior engineers (not only juniors)
• Experience working in a global, distributed team environment

Who Thrives Here

Principal Android engineering at Deltatre is technical authority without distance from the code. You are still the engineer who can sit down with a stuck team and work through the problem with them. You are also the person who can sit in a room with product leadership and explain, in their language, why the architectural choice that looks expensive this quarter is the cheap one for next year. People who thrive in this role tend to be honest about technical trade‑offs (they don't oversell solutions or under‑warn about risks), generous with their reasoning (they explain why, not only what), and patient with the long‑arc work where the value of a decision becomes visible only over multiple Android releases. The role asks for deep Android expertise plus the patience and credibility to influence other engineers without managing them.

Process and what to expect

• Introductory conversation: a step for us to get to know each other better, and for us to answer all questions you might have around Deltatre.
• 1‑hour Technical round of Interview: we will deep dive on your experience and collect examples of the responsibilities you've been dealing with in your past experience. A chance to deep dive on the role and for you to ask questions.
• 1‑hour Competency Based Interview: we will ask you situational questions around how you deal with real‑life scenarios at work. Easier doing it, more than explaining it.