Job Description:

Senior Android Engineer (Contractor)

Location: Manchester city centre, 2 days/week onsite + remote 3 days/week

Contract: Initial 3-4 month contract (strong likelihood of extension)

Rate: £400-500 (Outside IR35)

Start Date: Early October

Overview

Are you looking to make a genuine, visible impact in a short window rather than settle into a long slow ramp-up? This role offers exactly that.

We're looking for an experienced Senior Android Engineer to join the Digital Engineering team of a well-known UK consumer brand, on a hands-on delivery contract supporting a significant new customer-facing proposition. The Android app is a modern, Kotlin-first, Jetpack Compose-only application built on multi-module clean architecture, with an established in-house permanent engineering team already in place. This is a genuine delivery role for someone who can get up to speed fast, ship high-quality software without unnecessary ceremony, and leave the codebase in a better state than they found it — not a role for someone looking to ease in slowly.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and build Android experiences to support a significant new customer-facing proposition.
• Help establish and evolve a dedicated design system of reusable UI components and patterns.
• Review and improve the automated test suite — remove brittle or low-value tests, raise confidence in releases.
• Identify and address technical debt, improving maintainability and simplifying the application where appropriate.
• Contribute to architecture, coding standards, performance and modern Android engineering practices.
• Integrate the app with backend APIs and services.
• Work closely with product, design and QA colleagues to deliver changes safely and iteratively.

Requirements

• Strong commercial Android development experience, ideally at Senior Engineer level or above.
• Excellent Kotlin knowledge.
• Strong knowledge of modern Android development practices and architecture, including multi-module clean architecture.
• Experience building modern Android user interfaces, ideally using Jetpack Compose.
• Experience creating or contributing to reusable component libraries or design systems.
• Strong experience with automated testing, including improving and maintaining existing test suites (JUnit, MockK, Espresso, Compose UI Testing or equivalent).
• Experience integrating mobile applications with backend APIs and services (Retrofit/OkHttp or equivalent).
• Strong understanding of maintainability, performance and application quality.
• Comfortable working within an existing codebase and making pragmatic, incremental improvements.
• Able to work independently while collaborating closely with an established engineering team.
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative approach to solving problems.

Desirable

• Experience delivering complex customer-facing propositions on a consumer app with a significant production user base.
• Experience with high-volume transactional or membership-based mobile experiences.
• Experience with CI/CD and automated Android release pipelines (GitHub Actions or equivalent).
• Experience with mobile observability, crash monitoring and performance optimisation (Firebase, Datadog or equivalent).
• Familiarity with dependency injection frameworks (Koin, Hilt or equivalent) and Kotlin Coroutines.

Why Join?

• Genuine, hands-on delivery ownership — not a ticket-taking role.
• A tangible, visible contribution to a major new customer proposition within a short engagement.
• Work within a modern, Compose-only, multi-module codebase with strong existing engineering conventions.
• Close collaboration with an established, high-calibre permanent engineering team.
• Strong likelihood of extension beyond the initial term for the right candidate.

Apply

If you're an experienced Senior Android Engineer who can join an established codebase, get productive fast and make a real impact within a short contract, we'd love to hear from you. Apply today for a confidential discussion.