Founding iOS Engineer

Job description:

Founding iOS Engineer

New York, NY

About the role

Were hiring a Founding iOS Engineer to build the next-generation iOS experience from the ground up.

This is a rare opportunity to define the architecture, engineering standards, user experience, and technical direction of a new native iOS app at a company with real scale, strong momentum, and meaningful product complexity. You will help shape how millions of users discover, book, and enjoy our client's features on mobile across search, property details, booking, account, and post-booking experiences.

This is not a role for someone looking to simply implement tickets. Were looking for an engineer with strong product instincts, excellent engineering judgment, and a high bar for craft, someone who wants to help define what mobile should be at our client for years to come.

Youll work closely with Product, Design, Backend, Data, and company leadership. Youll own critical decisions end-to-end, from architecture and developer experience to app performance, reliability, analytics, and release quality. You will also help shape our broader mobile app strategy and, over time, help build the iOS team and engineering culture around you.

This role will be in person at our energetic NYC headquarters (onsite 4 days per week MON-THUR). The base salary range is $190,000 to $210,000 , plus meaningful equity, commensurate with experience.

What youll do

• Own the iOS app end-to-end across core marketplace flows including search, discovery, property details, booking, account, and post-booking.
• Build a high-quality native iOS codebase from the ground up, including architecture, state management, networking, observability, testing strategy, CI/CD, and release processes.
• Partner closely with Product and Design to build intuitive, polished, trustworthy mobile experiences with excellent attention to detail.
• Help define our mobile app strategy , including where mobile should lead, how it should differentiate from web, and where it can create the most leverage for the business.
• Work with backend engineers to shape API contracts that make the app fast, resilient, and easy to evolve.
• Drive performance, reliability, and quality across startup time, navigation, rendering, networking, offline handling, error states, and app stability.
• Instrument the app thoughtfully so product and engineering teams can measure funnels, understand behavior, and iterate with confidence.
• Set the technical bar for iOS engineering through architecture decisions, code reviews, testing discipline, and pragmatic engineering standards.
• Help define the long-term mobile platform strategy, including how we scale the codebase, development practices, and team over time.
• Play a foundational leadership role in building the iOS function, including helping attract, mentor, and eventually build a strong team around you.
• Contribute to product thinking, not just implementation, by bringing strong opinions on UX quality, mobile-first opportunities, and smart tradeoffs.

Tech stack

iOS: Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit Backend: Ruby on Rails, Node.js Data: Postgres, MongoDB Infra / Obs: AWS, Datadog Testing: XCTest, UI testing, CI/CD pipelines

Qualifications:

Who you are

We encourage candidates to apply even if they dont match every line below.

• 5+ years building production iOS applications with meaningful consumer-facing scale, quality, and complexity.
• Strong command of Swift and modern iOS development patterns.
• Experience building polished native experiences with strong attention to performance, usability, animation, responsiveness, and edge cases.
• You have led or heavily influenced architecture decisions for a substantial iOS codebase.
• You care deeply about product quality and can translate complex states and workflows into simple, elegant user experiences.
• You know how to move fast without creating long-term fragility.
• Youre comfortable working closely with backend engineers on APIs, data contracts, and systems tradeoffs.
• You have strong engineering fundamentals: code quality, testing discipline, observability, release reliability, and operational ownership.
• You are energized by zero-to-one work and want real ownership, not a narrow lane.
• You bring taste and judgment. You know when to insist on quality, when to simplify, and how to make smart tradeoffs in a fast-moving company.
• Ideally, youve worked on high-quality consumer products at top engineering organizations or elite startups where the bar for craft and execution is exceptionally high.
• Youre a good person. Building a startup is hard. Being thoughtful, low-ego, and great to work with should not be. We care deeply about building an ambitious team with a strong culture. This retains and sharpens the values language from your current JD.

What success looks like (6 to 12 months)

• Youve helped launch a high-quality new iOS app that materially improves the customer experience.
• Youve established strong, pragmatic foundations for the iOS codebase that the team can confidently build on.
• Youve shipped multiple meaningful improvements to core mobile journeys with measurable impact on conversion, performance, stability, and user satisfaction.
• Youre a trusted partner to Product, Design, and Backend, and a key voice in mobile product direction.
• Youve raised the bar on mobile engineering quality, speed, and product craftsmanship across the company.
• Youve helped define what a great mobile engineering culture looks like at and laid the foundation for building the team around you.

Why is This a Great Opportunity:

Our client is redefining what it means to be a hotel guest. Were building a new category in hospitality: day access to luxury hotel experiences, from breathtaking pools and private beaches to deluxe spas and wellness escapes, so people can enjoy incredible experiences without an overnight stay.

Our marketplace connects guests with 2,500+ partner hotels and resorts, including Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, Marriott, Hilton, and more. Weve helped millions of people enjoy premium hospitality close to home, making rest more mindful, togetherness more meaningful, and escape more accessible. The result is unforgettable experiences for guests and meaningful new revenue streams for partners.

Backed by some of the best consumer and growth investors, including CRV, Declaration, Brian Kelly (The Points Guy), WME, FJ Labs, and more, our client is scaling a product people love while creating an entirely new way to experience hospitality.

Weve demonstrated product-market fit at scale, were the category leader, growing fast, and nearing profitability. Yet the team is still small enough that one exceptional engineer can have outsized influence across product, technology, and the business.

For context on scale: 5M+ customers served, 250K+ monthly users and growing, 800K app installs last year, and hundreds of millions of dollars generated for our hotel partners.

Were now entering a new phase of growth. Were expanding into new categories, deepening distribution, and accelerating international expansion. Mobile is core to that next chapter.

Benefits:

• Health, Dental & Vision We're deeply invested in the health and well-being of our team and are proud to contribute to the monthly premiums of these insurance plans.
• Stock Option Plan We offer employees the opportunity to become part-owners in our mission. Lets redefine what it means to be a guest, together.
• 401k plan Save for your future with a 410k plan offering.
• Unlimited Paid Time Off (PTO) Enjoy life away from work to be inspired and fully recharge with unlimited paid time off.
• Annual credit Our mission is to bring delight and relaxation to people around the world; including our employees! Access private beaches, deluxe saunas, awesome pools, and much more with your annual credit.