Lead Mobile Engineer

Role: Lead Mobile Engineer
Salary: £80,000 - £90,000 + annual performance bonus + stock
Location: Lancaster University, 4 days/week preferred, 2 days/week minimum
Relocation: Relocation package available
Reporting into: CTO (Head of Software currently vacant)
Progression to: Head of Software
Start: ASAP

About Quantum Base

Quantum Base exists to make quantum science useful. Founded at Lancaster University in 2015 by Professor Robert Young, we have spent a decade solving a problem the security industry had accepted as unsolvable: authentication that is impossible to copy, clone or fake, yet simple enough for anyone to use.

Our core technology, Q-ID®, is an authentication fingerprint built on quantum physics that anyone can authenticate in under three seconds with the smartphone already in their pocket. Impossibly simple. Atomically secure.

Q-ID® is protected by more than 40 patents, has undergone independent adversarial testing, and is already protecting around two billion products worldwide across tax stamps, pharmaceuticals, alcohol, luxury goods, FMCG, automotive, aerospace, secure documents and more. We work with printers and brands to make quantum technology practical and accessible for any product, anywhere in the world.

Quantum Base is headquartered in Lancaster and listed on the London Stock Exchange (LON: QUBE) in 2025. See Q-ID® in action: https://www.quantumbase.com/how-q-id-works

About the Role

Mobile is the front door to the Q-ID. Every authentication, whether it’s a customs officer scanning a tax stamp, a partner embedding Q-ID verification into their own app, or a consumer checking a product is genuine, happens on a smartphone. These authentications happen in variable real-world conditions, on a wide range of devices. We are looking for a hands-on engineering leader to own that surface end-to-end.

The Lead Mobile Engineer will be responsible for leading and managing the mobile engineering team, with a tech stack spanning (in order of importance):

• Native iOS (Swift, SwiftUI, AVFoundation, Core ML, Vision)
• Native Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, CameraX, ML Kit, TensorFlow Lite)
• Computer vision and on-device ML for Q-ID authentication
• Mobile SDK design and distribution, for partners embedding Q-ID into their own apps
• Cross platform integrations like .NET MAUI
• Integration with our AWS verification APIs

This is a senior leadership position for someone who is still in the code day-to-day. Q-ID authentication is a computer-vision problem running on a consumer device in unpredictable lighting, on substrates ranging from paper tax stamps to gold blister packs. Small mobile improvements (scan speed, false-reject rate, camera handling) have outsized commercial impact and are often the difference between winning and losing a customer. The role is varied and includes:

Strategic Leadership

• Own the technical direction for mobile at Quantum Base.
• Help define roadmaps that align with the commercial pipeline .
• Set the bar for scan performance, reliability and device coverage.
• Build a culture of fast iteration, measured against real scan data, not just unit tests.
• Encourage the use of modern best practices and AI tooling

Team Management

• Lead, mentor and grow the mobile engineering team.
• Recruit and retain strong mobile talent; build a team that is comfortable working alongside physicists, mathematicians and ML specialists.
• Partner closely with the cloud team, R&D team and the commercial team.

Technical Oversight

• Be hands-on across complex mobile problems — camera pipelines, image preprocessing, on-device inference, SDK packaging, app-store release engineering.
• Raise the engineering bar on code quality, automated testing (including on-device and real-substrate testing), CI/CD for mobile, crash and performance monitoring.
• Own the mobile SDK contract with partners.
• Work with product, design, algorithms and customer implementation to turn scan performance requirements into shippable releases.
• Represent mobile in customer-facing technical conversations, including with security printers and government programmes where reliability expectations are high.

Key Experience

• 8+ years in mobile software engineering, with at least 3 years leading teams.
• Deep, hands-on expertise in both native iOS (Swift) and native Android (Kotlin).
• Experience with camera, computer vision and on-device ML on mobile (Core ML / Vision / ML Kit / TensorFlow Lite, or equivalent).
• Experience designing and shipping a mobile SDK consumed by third-party developers.
• Strong engineering fundamentals (SOLID, TDD, clean architecture) and a pragmatic view of when to apply them.
• Solid understanding of Agile and DevOps practices as they apply to mobile (CI/CD, release trains, staged rollouts, crash and performance analytics).
• Track record of working with cloud-backed mobile products and integrating with REST APIs on AWS or equivalent.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills, and comfort in front of customers.
• Expert with modern AI tooling

Nice to have experience

• A background in science, especially physics or mathematics.
• Background in computer vision, image processing or applied ML.

Benefits

We're continually updating and improving our benefits. Some of our benefits include:

• 30 days annual leave (on top of public holidays)
• Relocation package available if you want to move to Lancaster
• Great Tech - A brand new, hi-spec MacBook Pro.
• Flexible Working Hours - we are flexible with what hours you work
• Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff
• Cycle to Work Scheme - Big savings when buying a bicycle through the business.
• Pension
• Bonus
• Participation in the company share scheme

If you are a driven and ambitious professional ready to take your career to the next level, we want to hear from you.