Who We Are (Mode.Inc)
Mode is a fast-growing technology company building businesses at the intersection of AI, data, mobile apps, and digital experiences. Our portfolio of mobile apps and digital products reaches 100M+ monthly active users across a global audience. We continue to accelerate growth through product innovation, strategic acquisitions, and emerging business opportunities.
Mode was recognized by Deloitte as the #1 fastest-growing software company in North America on the 2023 Technology Fast 500. Today, we are building our next phase of growth, including expanding Mode's AI and data business and developing direct relationships with companies that can benefit from the data and capabilities we have built.
Our Team and Culture Drive Our Success
Our team is the heart of our culture. We value innovation, collaboration, and curiosity, with a passion for getting things done. We strive to hire and cultivate the best team members and foster a culture of open communication and transparency. We are driven and hard-working but also committed to having fun along the way. We allow OKRs to guide us, assume positive intent, sometimes agree to disagree and commit, honor our commitments, seek to accomplish more with less, and encourage everyone to speak up as our team owns our company’s success.
You can read more about our team and how we work here.
The Role
Mode.Inc is looking for a Senior Native Mobile Engineer to join the team taking ownership of our newly acquired VPN product and the additional apps we will be acquiring. You will own the Android and iOS mobile domain end-to-end: a consumer VPN with 10M+ installs, 1,000+ servers in 45+ countries, and users in some of the most restrictive network environments in the world.
This is an ownership-heavy role: you'll inherit existing mobile codebases, understand how the apps interact with the VPN networking stack, close knowledge gaps from the acquired team, improve engineering quality and release processes, and ship product improvements that directly impact users and the business.
The apps sit on top of a custom Go networking engine (Shadowsocks / WireGuard) delivered as a native library, plus OpenVPN via TunnelKit on iOS, and you will be the person who makes that engine feel fast, reliable, and effortless to users. We are a user-facing product-led team, and we are looking for someone who is passionate about building private, secure products that people depend on every day.
You’ll work closely with the backend engineer, DevOps/network engineer, product managers, designers, marketing, operations, and several stakeholders to define and execute according to our strategic roadmap to accelerate our future growth.
Who You Are and What You’ll Do
- You are passionate about giving people private, secure, and unrestricted access to the internet. You care about your users and the trust they place in the product.
- You’re an expert in smartphone technology and love mobile application software, equally comfortable shipping on Android and iOS, and you are not afraid to go below the app layer into VPN tunnels, network extensions, and platform APIs.
- You know how to integrate and debug native libraries (.aar / .framework) written in other languages, and you don't need to be a Go expert, but you should be comfortable reading Go and debugging across the mobile/native-library boundary when investigating VPN issues.
- You enjoy inheriting an existing product, reading unfamiliar code, and reverse-engineering how things work, then making them better with tests, documentation, and refactoring.
- You embrace agentic AI as a force multiplier: you use AI coding agents to plan, implement, test, and review work, and you know when to trust them and when to verify.
- You value working closely with Product Management, learning directly from users about what matters to them, and developing solutions that they love.
- You care deeply about the impact of your work, and measure success by the value added to users’ lives: connection success rate, time-to-connect, crash-free sessions, and subscription conversion.
- You’re excited to write high-quality, maintainable, and well-tested code that you deliver. You are eager to find minimal ways to test hypotheses and validate feasibility.
- You’re a strong advocate for unit/integration testing and passionate about automated testing and continuously shipping to production on both app stores, replacing day-long manual regression with automation.
- You are security-minded: secure storage of tokens and keys (Keychain, EncryptedSharedPreferences), certificate handling, and user privacy are part of everyday engineering, not an afterthought.
What You Bring to the Team
Must Have:
- 5+ years of professional senior mobile engineering experience in an agile environment delivering native applications to end-users on both Android and iOS, with hands-on production experience using:
- Android: Kotlin (and Java), Jetpack Compose and XML views (including migrating legacy XML to Compose), Coroutines, Flow, Koin, Dagger/Hilt, Retrofit, Room, WorkManager, foreground services
- iOS: Swift, UIKit and SwiftUI (including incremental UIKit-to-SwiftUI migration), Swift Concurrency (async/await), RxSwift + RxCocoa, Combine, Core Data or equivalent, Keychain
- Platform networking and VPN APIs: Android VpnService, iOS NetworkExtension / Packet Tunnel Provider, always-on VPN, kill switch, split tunneling, and integrating native libraries (.aar / .framework / XCFramework) into mobile apps
- GitHub for version control and pull-request based workflows
- SOLID, Clean Coding, Testing, experience with automation and instrumentation (Espresso/UI Automator, XCTest/XCUITest)
- Publishing and maintaining apps on Google Play and the Apple App Store, including release management, store compliance for VPN apps, and handling review rejections
- Working knowledge of VPN protocols and networking fundamentals: WireGuard, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks or similar, TCP/IP, DNS, TLS, and how packets flow from a mobile OS tunnel interface to a proxy or VPN server.
- Experience with subscription and in-app purchase flows (StoreKit 2, Google Play Billing, RevenueCat or similar), paywalls, free trials, and integrating attribution and analytics SDKs (Amplitude, Firebase, AppsFlyer/Adjust or similar).
- Agentic AI proficiency: demonstrated day-to-day use of AI agents (e.g., Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot agents) to write and review infrastructure code, automate runbooks, and investigate incidents, with strong judgment on verifying AI-generated output before it touches production.
- You’re a candid and empathetic communicator that is excited to join a startup that enjoys leveling up a company.
- You have exceptional organizational and analytical skills leading to confident independent delivery, but know when and how to include others.
- You have experience building large-scale consumer apps with some technical leadership skills.
- Passionate about Technology and keeping up to date with latest advancements, techniques and best practices.
- Alignment with our Core Values:
- Accountable: You take ownership of your responsibilities, demonstrating trustworthiness and self-discipline. You are consistent in your work, transparent in your actions, and communicate effectively. You follow through on commitments and strive for continuous improvement.
- Action-driven: Identify what is most important, agree on scope, timely execute, and drive the greatest impact. You take initiative, roll up your sleeves, and get things done.
- Caring: You genuinely care about yourself and others, our business and craft, our mission and vision, and are passionate in heart and mind. You understand the importance of our team and strive to create a positive, supportive work environment.
- Curious: You focus on the ‘why,’ learn and expand your knowledge, explore new ideas, and generally make things better. You're a lifelong learner with a thirst for knowledge and a constant desire to improve.
- Thorough: Your work is thoughtful, impactful, timely, accurate, and complete. You pay attention to detail, are meticulous, and ensure quality work and compliance.
Nice to Have:
- (Strongly preferred) You will help take over the existing mobile codebases from the acquired team, close knowledge gaps, understand undocumented dependencies, and progressively bring the apps into Mode's engineering standards and delivery practices.
- (Strongly preferred) Experience shipping or maintaining a consumer VPN, proxy, or privacy product, especially censorship-circumvention tooling and traffic obfuscation
- (Strongly preferred) Experience with TunnelKit / OpenVPNAdapter, wireguard-apple / wireguard-android, gomobile-built libraries, or userspace network stacks (lwIP, gVisor netstack)
- (Strongly preferred) Reading or writing Go
- Web frontend experience (React / TypeScript) for the product’s website, account portal, and landing pages
- Kotlin Multiplatform or other approaches to sharing logic across the two apps
- CI/CD tools such as GitHub Actions, Fastlane, Bitrise, or Xcode Cloud, and setting up pipelines from scratch
- Firebase Crashlytics, Remote Config, and A/B testing / feature flags
- Localization at scale (15+ languages) and building for low-end devices and unreliable networks
What Success Looks Like
First 30–60 days
- Understand the Android/iOS architecture and release processes.
- Map the VPN integration and native networking libraries.
- Identify critical technical and security risks.
- Establish reliable local/build/release workflows.
- Close knowledge gaps from the acquired team.
- Contribute to 100% uptime.
Within 90–180 days
- Stabilize the mobile apps.
- Improve automated testing and CI/CD.
- Complete the Android and iOS codebase modernization work.
- Improve crash-free sessions and connection success.
- Establish predictable app-store release processes.
- Become the clear technical owner of the mobile domain.
- Contribute to Uptime at world class market levels for similar products.
We Believe in the Following Workplace Norms
- Allow OKRs to Guide Us
- Assume Positive Intent
- Agree to Disagree & Commit
- Set New Precedents
- Accomplish More with Less
- Hold Yourself & Others to High Standards
- Speak Up
- Be Resourceful
- Follow the 80/20 Rule
What We Are Offering
- We are a 100% remote-first, global company.
- A competitive compensation package.
- We offer generous perks and benefits to team members.
- Participation in the Company's equity plan (for full-time team members).
- We provide individual bonuses in accordance with our Company Bonus Program.
- Work with energetic, passionate, and results-driven people.
- Celebrate team members' personal and work milestones.
- Remote social activities, including virtual coffee buddies.
- Bonusly - We use Bonusly as a way to recognize and reward team members for their hard work and commitment.
- Weekly Wednesday Get Stuff Done Days (No Meetings).
- Open PTO, generous Company Holidays, and Wellness Days (for full-time team members).
This role is ideal for a results-driven marketing professional with a strong technical background and a keen eye for detail. If you are passionate about digital marketing and investor communications, we encourage you to apply and join a dynamic and innovative team.
If we just described you and your perfect role, we'd love to talk with you. We have a lot to accomplish this year and look forward to making headway and creating success together!
Mode.Inc does not accept/pay fees for unsolicited resumes from third-party agencies/vendors.
Our company is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer. We are committed to providing a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We celebrate diversity and strive to create an inclusive environment for all team members.