Android Engineer (Senior-Staff Levels)

About Cantina:

Cantina Labs is a social AI company developing a suite of advanced real-time models that push the boundaries of expression personality and realism. We bring characters to life transforming how people tell stories connect and create. We build and power ecosystems. Cantina our flagship social AI platform is just the beginning.

If youre excited about the potential AI has to shape human creativity and social interactions join us in building the future!

About the Role:

As an Android Engineer at Cantina youll lead the development of innovative high-performance features from crafting personalized feeds and immersive custom UIs to empowering bots with AI-driven capabilities like chatting text-to-speech voice selection image creation and real-time media effects. Working closely with Product Managers Designers and Sean Parker youll influence the direction of a product central to the companys mission move quickly to deliver impactful updates and enjoy the autonomy to bring your ideas to life.

Were looking for someone who thrives on pushing the limits of Android development and has a passion for creating visually stunning high-performance experiences. Your expertise in custom graphics animation frameworks and media pipelines will help shape the creative foundation of our flagship app.

What youll do:

• Build and ship high-quality Android features using Jetpack Compose Kotlin Coroutines and modern Android architecture patterns.

• Develop and optimize video/audio pipelines real-time media effects and AI-powered visual features on Android.

• Craft immersive custom UI experiences with deep expertise in Compose animations custom drawing and motion design.

• Leverage deep Android internals knowledge memory management rendering pipeline Choreographer RenderThread to deliver buttery-smooth performance.

• Architect and maintain clean MVVM application structure with well-separated concerns across UI domain and data layers.

• Set up and manage dependency injection using Koin or Hilt ensuring scalable and testable module graphs.

• Participate in architecture discussions and uphold high standards for code quality testability and maintainability.

• Collaborate with Product Design and QA teams to deliver polished scalable experiences.

• Take ownership of features as part of a small fast-moving team shipping to a large user base.

What youll bring:

• 8 years of experience developing Android applications or equivalent.

• Expert-level Kotlin idiomatic usage coroutines Flow and advanced language features.

• Deep Jetpack Compose expertise: custom layouts state management animation APIs (Animatable Transition AnimationSpec) and performance profiling.

• Strong command of MVVM architecture and the Android architecture components ecosystem (ViewModel LiveData/StateFlow Room Navigation WorkManager).

• Hands-on experience with dependency injection using Koin or Hilt in production Android apps.

• Strong understanding of Android internals: View system RenderThread Choreographer garbage collection and battery/memory profiling.

• Experience with media frameworks: ExoPlayer MediaCodec Camera2/CameraX and real-time effects.

• Ability to write readable maintainable documented and well-tested code.

• Experience with RESTful API integrations and proficiency with Git.

• Keen attention to detail motion and animation you notice when something is 2px off.

• Bonus: experience with AI-driven media features real-time video/audio effects or WebRTC on Android.

Compensation:

The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is between $180000-$240000. When determining compensation a number of factors will be considered including skills experience job scope location and competitive compensation market data.

Benefits:

• Competitive salary and generous company equity

• Medical dental and vision insurance 99.99% of premiums covered by Cantina

• 42 days of paid time off including:

  • 15 PTO days

  • 10 sick days

  • 15 company holidays

  • 2 floating holidays

• Generous parental leave & fertility support

• 401(k) retirement savings plan

• Lifestyle spending account $500/month to use however youd like

• Complimentary lunch and snacks for in-office employees

• One Medical membership and more!

Required Experience:

Staff IC