Principal Android Engineer

About the role

Rakuten International is looking for a Principal Android Engineer in Toronto to lead the evolution of its client application architecture and platform capabilities. The role defines the technical direction for Android across core frameworks, dynamic rendering systems and design system integrations, and works with product managers, designers and engineering teams to deliver high-performance, accessible and localized mobile apps. It also shapes reusable frameworks, UI component systems and SDK integrations.

Key responsibilities

• Advise senior management on strategic opportunities and risks from emerging technologies and industry trends.
• Develop and implement solutions that meet complex business objectives, and conduct research to improve system performance and scalability.
• Define the long-term Android platform technical roadmap and participate in architecture governance and design reviews.
• Set standards for API integration, coding, testing and deployment, and guide adoption of AI and machine learning strategies.
• Mentor team members, share knowledge, and drive cross-functional collaboration on high-priority projects.
• Pilot emerging technologies, mitigate technical risks and architectural debt, and improve developer experience through tooling, automation and documentation.

Required profile

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field.
• 15+ years of software engineering experience, including leadership roles.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Portfolio of published applications on GitHub and/or the Play Store.
• Experience with global app deployments, feature flags, A/B testing, analytics and monorepos.
• Experience using AI tools to improve engineering workflows, and familiarity with responsible AI practices.

Required skills

• Android SDK, Android Studio, Kotlin and Java.
• Architectural patterns such as MVVM, MVP or Clean Architecture.
• Modularization, dependency injection (Dagger or Hilt) and reactive programming (RxJava, Coroutines).
• XML Views and Jetpack Compose.
• Agile, code reviews, unit testing (JUnit, Robolectric) and UI testing (Espresso).
• Design systems; knowledge of emerging mobile technologies is a plus.