We have been working with a global beauty brand on a React Native app since the first part of 2024. The app has launched to the public, and we’ve got an exciting next wave of work to make our user experience even better and ensure our app is being used by our global audience as part of their daily lives. We are looking for a hands-on React Native Tech Lead to join our team, leading the ongoing delivery of the app.

The tech lead will join our existing team, who have shipped multiple iterations of the app to the App + Play stores, building new features to improve user engagement and increase the reach and impact of the app. They’ll be working alongside our design team, product owner, delivery coach, and engineering team to continue to build the product into a robust experience that users love and use every day. As Tech Lead, their responsibilities will include being a primary point of contact for project stakeholders, planning and executing work to the collaboratively-agreed roadmap across both the React Native app and Typescript/GCP backend-for-frontend, and design/implementation of upcoming app features.

The right candidate will have a track record of delivering successful mobile apps for big brands on time and within budget. They’ll bring their knowledge of mobile best practice to the team to help build a great React Native app that has some reliance on native Swift/iOS code for small (but important) pieces of functionality, and guide the team in planning across frontend/backend dependencies to ensure we’re delivering value incrementally.

This position will initially be maternity cover, starting in June 2025 through January 2026, with the possibility of converting to a permanent position.

Location 

This position is open to both our Portugal and Malmö locations. Our Portuguese team is dotted around the country as this is currently a fully remote studio (with concentrations around Lisbon, Porto, and Braga). 

Malmö-based candidates should be within commuting distance of our Malmö studio, as we’d love to see your face at least 2 days/week.

Key Skills 

This is a multifaceted role, and the following is not a checklist of mandatory requirements. We simply want to provide a transparent overview of what the role entails, so you know what you'll be doing if you join us and can come to the interview prepared to discuss these topics. Please don’t feel you need to meet every point to apply!

Technical

• Extensive React Native development experience, with demonstrated work on accessibility and automated testing
• Understanding of the React Native ecosystem (including Expo), and mobile considerations in general - whilst web React experience is great, we respect the differences in craft between building a well-structured mobile app vs. a web application.
• Experience working with Swift and/or Kotlin to complement React Native code where necessary - the highest concentration of this is around camera in our app, so experience around this would be helpful
• Understanding and demonstrable experience of planning for and implementing mobile apps securely, including using secure storage when necessary, transport layer security, and other approaches to ensure a secure experience for app users
• Building pixel-perfect UIs which work across iOS and Android, including helping the team to navigate choices around building vs. reusing components
• Diagnose and fix bugs and performance bottlenecks for smooth performance.
• Maintain code and write automated unit + integration tests to ensure the product is of the highest quality, and guiding the team to ensure test coverage is sufficient.
• Understanding of mobile application design architectures and their benefits to performance and code maintenance
• Experience working with Github and Github Actions, including maintenance of build pipelines
• Experience with app signing and release to app stores
• Experience working with Firebase for app distribution, analytics, and login/registration
• Familiarity with native build tools like XCode and Android Studio
• Familiarity with app signing and experience with releasing multiple applications to the App Store/Play Store, including beta testing via TestFlight & Play Store alpha/beta tracks
• Planning for release concerns such as feature flagging, upgrade paths, and backwards compatibility
• Understanding of REST APIs, including working with a backend development team to coordinate releases and ensure the mobile app has what it needs to deliver great performance and user experience

Lead activities

• Planning of work across our team to support new features, working alongside product, design, and delivery to balance feasibility, time constraints, UX/design, and quality. This requires a high level of collaboration across disciplines, weighing tradeoffs in design/implementation, and prioritisation.
• Structuring work/delivery across our backend and frontend teams in order to support the capabilities being delivered. This includes sharing the lead in refinement activities and roadmapping, keeping an eye on team progress + morale, and escalating blockers internally and with clients
• Act as a key point of contact for client-side technologists, agreeing on solution design for upcoming work, and tracking issues through to resolution when there are external dependencies
• Leading the application architecture + technical roadmap for the React Native app, and collaborating with backend-focussed engineers to meet the project’s needs. This includes prioritisation/deprioritisation of technical debt, ensuring quality in code reviews, and ensuring implementation is meeting our standards

Working practices

• Working with a cross discipline team to ensure delivery of high quality products on time and on budget
• Owning and/or overseeing the implementation of complex features
• Participating in code reviews, story refinements, sprint demos, and client communications
• Strong communication skills and client stakeholder management
• A positive mindset and can-do attitude

The right candidate

We’d like to speak with you about these parts of the role - please come prepared with examples of how you’ve demonstrated the following in previous roles:

• You are always open to conversation, but also ready to push for the right solution
• You exercise ruthless prioritisation – you know what to tackle next individually, you keep the rest of the team focused on the right tasks, and you know when to push back
• You are a team enabler – you spend a lot of your time getting things out of your team’s way so they have time to focus. You identify blockers and pick up whatever task needs to get done to make the team go faster.
• You have full-stack awareness – while not necessarily a backend expert, you’re involved in a lot of conversations and decisions about it and have a high level understanding of concepts and technologies
• You rely on your team’s expertise to make decisions – we can’t be experts in everything, but with a team of experts around you, you’re able to ask the right question to the right person and trust that information to move forward
• You never forget the user – as you focus on rapid incremental delivery, you keep asking yourself “Will this still make sense for users?” "Can we do something even smaller but still valuable to users?

Our Portuguese tech band for our Lead level is: €50,000k - €70,000k per year depending on experience. Our Malmo salary bands are 55,000 - 75,000 SEK per month depending on experience. 

Interested but think your experience doesn’t perfectly align with this job description? That’s ok. Research shows underrepresented groups in particular are less inclined to apply for jobs where they don’t meet 100% of the requirements listed. We’d still love to hear from you if you feel passionate about this role! We are committed to creating an inclusive environment for our colleagues, clients, community, and the users of our products. We don’t have all the answers but we’re on a journey, and we are learning together.

About ustwo

ustwo combines expertise in product and service development, ventures and gaming to make a meaningful impact on the challenges companies and individuals face in contemporary culture.

Over the years, we have been carving out a reputation in the space between digital product development and new experience design.

Our deep product development knowledge, our design heritage and our leadership at the edges of technology and culture, means we are capable of providing fresh creative and strategic direction on genuinely new experiences, as well as deep technical expertise on implementation - never disconnecting strategy from implementation.

This combination of capabilities is rare and valuable, particularly in a market that’s seeing ever-increasing convergence of entertainment, gaming, content, commerce, and platforms.