iOS Engineer | AI & Connected Devices | San Francisco $230k + equity

About the Company

A fast-growing, well-funded consumer technology company in San Francisco is looking for an exceptional iOS Engineer to join a small, highly technical engineering team building the next generation of intelligent, connected consumer products.

About the Role

This is not a traditional mobile-app role. The iOS application sits at the heart of the product experience, connecting directly with physical devices and providing the primary interface through which users interact with them. You’ll work across native iOS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi connectivity, real-time data, device state and AI-enabled features, partnering closely with hardware, firmware, backend and machine-learning engineers. The team is intentionally small, highly experienced and deeply product-focused. Engineers have significant ownership and are expected to take features from initial architecture all the way through development, testing and release.

Responsibilities

What You’ll Be Working On

You’ll help design and build a sophisticated native iOS application that communicates directly with connected hardware. Your work will include:

• Building reliable Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi pairing experiences
• Managing device connection, reconnection and background connectivity
• Developing real-time interfaces that respond instantly to changing device state
• Working with streaming data between hardware, mobile and cloud systems
• Supporting firmware updates delivered through the mobile application
• Designing robust device-state and synchronisation architecture
• Handling offline, degraded and unreliable connectivity gracefully
• Building AI-enabled product experiences involving both local and cloud processing
• Working with iOS background modes, notifications and Bluetooth permissions
• Optimising application performance and battery usage
• Taking features from technical design through to production and App Store release

This is the kind of environment where you may be sitting with a firmware engineer debugging why a physical device is dropping its connection one minute, then designing a new SwiftUI experience the next.

Qualifications

What We’re Looking For

You’ll need strong commercial experience building and shipping native iOS applications. The quality and complexity of what you have built matters more than an exact number of years.

Required Skills

You should have:

• Strong commercial Swift experience
• Strong SwiftUI and/or UIKit experience
• Experience shipping production iOS applications
• Experience with Core Bluetooth and/or real-time data streaming
• A strong understanding of iOS architecture and application state
• Experience taking features from architecture through implementation, testing and release
• Strong debugging and problem-solving skills
• Confidence working directly with engineers across different technical disciplines
• The ability to work independently without needing heavy process or supervision

We are particularly interested in engineers who enjoy understanding how an entire product works rather than only owning one isolated part of an application.

Preferred Skills

Highly Desirable

Experience building mobile applications that communicate with physical hardware would be particularly valuable. That could include:

• Connected consumer devices
• Wearables
• IoT products
• Cameras
• Audio hardware
• Robotics
• Smart-home products
• Sensors
• Automotive technology
• Medical devices
• Other Bluetooth-connected products

Experience inside a startup or small engineering team is also highly regarded. Personal technical projects are genuinely interesting here too. If you have built your own hardware, Bluetooth application, connected device, sensor project or experimental iOS product outside work, we would love to hear about it.

Who This Role Will Suit

This will suit an engineer who likes building things rather than maintaining things. You probably enjoy situations where the problem isn’t completely defined yet and you’re trusted to work out the best technical solution. You might find yourself thinking about questions such as:

• What happens if Bluetooth disappears halfway through an operation?
• How should the app recover when a device comes back online?
• How do we keep the UI perfectly aligned with the state of a physical device?
• Which processing should happen locally and which should happen in the cloud?
• How do we maintain a persistent connection without destroying battery life?

If those sound like interesting engineering problems rather than annoying edge cases, you’ll probably enjoy this environment.

What This Role Is Not

• This isn’t a React Native or Flutter position.
• It isn’t primarily backend engineering.
• It isn’t an AI research or machine-learning scientist role.
• It isn’t firmware or embedded engineering.
• And it isn’t a conventional mobile role where your main responsibility is converting Figma screens into application interfaces.

The core requirement is excellent native iOS engineering, combined with an interest in connected devices, real-time systems and physical products.

The Environment

You’ll join a small engineering organisation working closely alongside hardware and product teams in San Francisco. There is relatively little bureaucracy and engineers are trusted with significant technical ownership. Because the software interacts directly with physical hardware, collaboration between iOS, hardware and firmware engineers happens constantly. For that reason, this is an onsite San Francisco position rather than a remote role. Candidates relocating to San Francisco may be considered for relocation assistance on a case-by-case basis.

Pay range and compensation package

Package

• Base salary: up to US$230,000
• Competitive equity

Benefits include:

• Medical, dental and vision coverage
• Life insurance
• 401(k)
• 4–5 weeks PTO
• Daily lunch
• Dinner when working late
• Relocation support considered
• Visa sponsorship available

San Francisco, CA | Onsite | Full-Time

Up to US$230,000 +