Senior Mobile Engineer

Whip Around was  born in 2016, originally to help freight companies in New Zealand tackle their paper-based compliance burden. It was whilst working for some of the globe’s largest freight companies, that we saw first-hand how much time paper was costing fleet managers every day. Within a year, the US market was calling loudly as Whip Around met a clear pain point for businesses with fleets.  Whip Around now services customers from coast to coast in the US and around the world.

Team culture is at the heart of our success, with personal improvement being just as important as company outcomes. We now boast a senior leadership team with experience from numerous successful global businesses and continue to double down on our vision to bring simplicity and efficiency to fleet management and compliance.

Our Values

Each of us at Whip Around are committed to living and breathing our Values in everything we do. At Whip Around you will become part of a culture that’s committed to helping you become the best version of yourself. Whip Around is dedicated to our people!

• Be the Best You
• Be the Driver
• Always Bring Value
• Manaakitanga

Why this role is important to us

Our mobile apps are the product for most of our users. Drivers and fleet teams use them every day to complete inspections, capture defects, and keep vehicles safe and compliant - often in environments with limited connectivity.

We're adding a Senior Mobile Engineer in New Zealand to bring technical leadership closer to our core engineering team. You'll work hands-on across iOS and Android, partnering directly with Product and the CTO to shape where our mobile platform goes next. This isn't a feature factory role - you'll influence what we build, how we build it, and how we work as a team.

What you’ll do

• Own the delivery of mobile features end-to-end from understanding the customer problem to shipping and monitoring in production
• Partner with Product and Design to shape what we build and how we build while bringing the mobile and technical perspective to product decisions
• Drive architectural decisions for our mobile platform
• Ensure our apps remain reliable, performant, and maintainable, particularly in offline-first environments
• Review code, share best practices, and support the growth of the wider mobile team
• Identify technical risks early and propose pragmatic solutions
• Improve our mobile development processes, tooling, and CI/CD pipelines - including how we use AI in our dev workflow
• Collaborate with backend engineers on API design - and be willing to dive into backend code when it makes sense
• Think beyond the current sprint - advocate for the investments in reliability, performance, and architecture that our growth demands
• Actively experiment with new tools, frameworks, and AI capabilities - and bring what works back to the team

What success will look like

• You've shipped features that customers in the field actually use and value - and you know this because you've sought out that feedback
• App crash rates and performance metrics are trending in the right direction
• You've driven at least one meaningful architectural improvement (offline sync, testing strategy, CI pipeline, etc.)
• Product and engineering stakeholders trust your judgment on technical tradeoffs - you've earned that through clear communication and sound reasoning
• Other engineers on the team are learning from you - through code review, pairing, or the standards you set
• You've gone beyond mobile at least once - contributed to an API design, challenged a product assumption, or dug into customer data to inform a decision

Why this role, why now

• A team that makes you better - You'll work alongside engineers who are curious, direct, and technically strong. We push each other. We don't do "that's not my area."
• Real impact, every day - Our apps are used by drivers and fleet managers in the field. You'll ship something and hear about it from customers within days, not quarters.
• Cutting-edge tech during the biggest shift in a generation - We're actively integrating AI into our development workflow and our product. You won't be reading about AI transformation - you'll be doing it.
• Breadth that builds career resilience - This isn't a "stay in your lane" role. You'll touch product strategy, backend APIs, customer workflows, and mobile architecture. The kind of breadth that makes you more valuable every year, not less.
• NZ-based, global product - Based in Auckland with a distributed team serving customers across the US and globally.

What kind of engineer thrives here

• High agency - You don't wait to be told what to work on. You see broken things and fix them. You see opportunities and chase them. You own outcomes, not tasks.
• Relentlessly curious beyond mobile - You want to understand the product, the customer's day (a driver doing a pre-trip inspection at 5am), the backend, the data. AI makes it possible for one engineer to meaningfully contribute across all of these - and you want to.
• Clear communicator - You can explain a technical tradeoff to a Product Owner in plain language. You write things down. You make the implicit explicit.
• Comfortable with ambiguity - We're evolving our mobile platform. The roadmap isn't fully drawn. That excites you, not stresses you.
• AI-native - You know the shifting boundary between what AI handles well and where human direction is needed - and you adapt as that edge moves every month. You lean on AI heavily to multiply your output, but you know when to step in with your own judgment.

Our stack (you'll shape where it goes next)

• Android: Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Coroutines, Dagger/Hilt, CameraX, JUnit/Espresso
• iOS: Swift, SwiftUI, CoreData, XCTest
• Tooling: CI/CD pipelines, AI-assisted development (we actively use AI coding tools across the team)

You don't need to know all of this on day one. We care more about your ability to learn fast and think in systems than whether you've used a specific DI framework.

What gives you an edge

• Experience with offline-first architecture and sync strategies
• Experience building apps used by drivers, technicians, or field workers
• Exposure to backend systems, APIs, or product analytics - enough to be dangerous outside your core domain

• Hybrid working & core hours with flexibility outside of core hours - we understand you have a life and family outside of work and we support that!
• Free parking
• Southern Cross health insurance
• Birthday leave - goes without saying, no one wants to work on their birthday!
• Monthly team lunches
• Twelve weeks additional paid parental leave
• Regular Team events and activities