Mobile Engineer / Mobile Developer
Builds and ships the iOS and Android apps — including the parts nobody warns you about: store review, device fragmentation, and users who never update.
Who to hire
The shape of person who does this job well — and whether you should be hiring it at all yet.
Only hire when mobile is genuinely the product rather than a second window onto the website. The honest first question is whether a responsive web app would do, because a native app adds two platforms, two review queues and two release cycles to everything you do afterwards.
Education
No requirement. Shipped apps you can download and use are the portfolio, and the store listing shows the update history.
Experience
3+ years with apps actually in the stores. Ask about a rejected submission and how long it cost them — store review is the part that surprises teams.
Vertical / domain experience
Platform domain matters more than industry: iOS and Android are different jobs, and cross-platform frameworks are a third. Regulated mobile — health, banking — adds requirements around storage and biometrics.
What it pays, roughly
$90,002 median, Canada — for Computer, software and Web designers and developers, the closest occupation Statistics Canada actually measures, measured from $69,992 to $117,499 over 276,895 people. That occupation is broader than this role, so read it as an anchor, not a salary band — and note that a startup usually pays below it in cash and above it in equity.
Credentials and certifications
What exists, who issues it, and whether it means anything for this seat. A credential is evidence of a floor, never of judgment — and in a few of these roles it is a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
| Credential | Issued by | When it matters | Skiploma |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple and Google developer programmes | Apple, Google | Not a credential — an account the company must own. Register it in the company name, never a personal one, or you will lose the listing when the person leaves. | — |
| Platform certifications | Google (Android), Meta | Modest signal; shipped apps outrank it. | — |
What this role does at each stage
The same title means three different jobs depending on how much money is in the bank. Read the stage you are at, then read the next one — that is what you are hiring toward.
Not yet. Prove the demand on the web first.
One developer if mobile is the product, plus a decision about native versus cross-platform that you will live with for years.
A platform each, or a cross-platform team with someone who owns the release train.
Can one person hold this and something else?
The whole point of the many-hats problem: which of these jobs merge safely into one person, and which merges quietly cost you money or control.
Merges well with
Mobile and frontend merge where a cross-platform framework is used, and that is the usual arrangement under about ten engineers.
Keep separate from
No structural conflict. The practical risk is one person owning both stores with no second pair of hands when a release is rejected.
Reading a candidate
What good looks like in an hour, and what should stop the process.
Good signals
- Can show apps in the stores with a real update history
- Talks about crash rates and device coverage
- Knows the review guidelines that bite
Red flags
- Only prototypes, never shipped
- No view on offline behaviour
- Treats store review as an afterthought
The same role in three kinds of company
This job changes shape depending on who is paying for it. An agency sells the hours, a contract shop delivers into someone else's estate, and a product company is building something it keeps — and the same title means something different in each.
In an agency
Agencies live on mobile builds, and the trap is handing over a project the client cannot release — transfer the store accounts, signing keys and certificates in writing at the end.
On a client contract
On contract, the signing keys and store ownership are the deliverable people forget. Put them in the statement of work.
In a product company
In a product company, the release cadence is set by the store review queue, not by you; plan the roadmap around it.
What this role runs on
The software categories this job lives in. Each links to our buying brief and to the research behind it.
| Category | Who the default is | What leaving costs | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project Management Software | Microsoft, Atlassian, Asana, Monday | The weakest in this research | The research → |
| DAM — Digital Asset Management | Adobe Experience Manager Assets | The asset library and its metadata schema, plus every embed and integration pointing at those URLs | The research → |