Apps Developer

We're looking for an Android Developer to join our team.

The Guardian is one of the world's biggest liberal news organisations. We are renowned for our groundbreaking independent journalism, our award-winning digital products and excellent engineering team.

Development of digital products is central to the Guardian. You could be building the products that showcase our progressive and independent journalism, crafting the tools that journalists use to write their stories, developing the services that allow those stories to be distributed across the globe, or safeguarding our financial future.

Please visit our Guardian engineering site and the Guardian engineering blog for more information about working in the Product & Engineering department.

We create our award-winning Android app primarily in Kotlin and Java using Android Studio. We're focussed on providing a fast and stable experience to our users, and our Play Store rating of 4.7 stars is testament to that.

What you'll be doing:

• You'll be building and testing major new features, as well as improving and maintaining existing functionality for The Guardian’s Android apps.
• Our current codebase is 90%+ in Kotlin, but you may be required to work with Java too.
• You won't be coding in isolation - our culture is strongly collaborative, whether pair programming with other developers or working closely with other stakeholders.
• You can expect to work closely with iOS, server-side, and web engineers, and designers, product managers, editorial and commercial colleagues.
• You'll have a voice in all big decisions the team makes.
• Sometimes deciding what code to write is as hard as writing the code itself. As an engineer you'll be involved in product decisions as well as technical ones.
• You'll be reviewing the code of other engineers to ensure we maintain our app's high standard.
• You'll strive to be innovative on a daily basis, as well as at our regular hack days.

About You:

• You are a creative, passionate, and intelligent person who loves technology.
• You may love the news or you may want to reinvent it.
• You take an interest in why we do things, and you're able to focus on delivering value for your team.
• You are, or aspire to be, an expert in Android development and you have a strong interest in growing your skills.
• You have strong competence in one or more of modern Android development tools, including Jetpack Compose, Coroutines/Flow, MVVM, Webviews, other Jetpack libraries, and modular app architectures.
• You test your code and promote a culture of testing. Demonstrate experience with some of JVM unit testing, instrumented testing, and UI regression testing.
• You are comfortable working with both cutting edge technologies as well as legacy code.
• You can make intelligent choices regarding what technologies to use and when to use them.
• You have experience of, and a willingness to work in Agile development environments.

What we offer:

• Flexible working (see below for details)
• Flexible public holidays
• Generous pension scheme; if you contribute 5% then the Guardian will contribute 8-12% (depending on your age)
• Mental and Physical Health insurance and dental scheme
• 10% time. Dedicated time for personal development, separate from time spent contributing to your team's delivery.
• 30 days annual leave plus bank holidays with  the option to purchase an extra 5 days
• Up to 26 weeks of parental leave at full pay
• Multi-faith prayer room
• Cycle to work scheme and subsidised gym membership
• Paid volunteering days
• Annual season ticket loan

More about flexible working

We want to build diverse and inclusive teams, where everyone can do their best work. We see real value in face-to-face collaboration but we also understand the benefits of working remotely and the flexibility this offers.

The majority of Guardian staff in the UK are based in the Kings Place office for three days a week, as we believe we are at our best when most staff work from the office together, most of the time. However there is a recognition that not all software development roles require such a regular presence in the office, and so there is different expectations per role:

• Engineering Managers and Head of Engineering: 3 days per week in the office
• All Software Developers/Engineers: 1 day per week in the office

If you want to come in a lot more than that, that’s great too.

We also support a variety of flexible working requests. We encourage flexible working to better balance the needs of the company and employees as their circumstances change over time. No two situations are identical, so please discuss with us at or before the offer stage.

We strive for transparency in remuneration. The salary for new Apps Developers at the Guardian is £60,000.

We welcome applicants with diverse backgrounds, different lived experiences and different perspectives. A diverse team means we can better reflect and engage our global audience.

We believe in hiring the best people from the widest pool, and also in including them, fostering a culture where people's voices can be heard and our employees look forward to coming to work.

Application instructions:

To apply for this position you must already have the right to work in the UK.

Please upload your CV and covering letter. You should also highlight the extent to which your skills/experience meets the requirements of the role and your motivation behind applying.

Our interview process involves two stages: a face to face interview and a pairing test. These are conducted remotely as default but if you would like to come to the office and have a face to face interview for any of the stages please let us know. If you are successful in those 2 stages, we will invite you to join the office to meet the team in person before making you an offer. 

You can find out more about our hiring process:

• https://www.theguardian.com/info/developer-blog/2015/jan/20/how-does-the-guardian-recruit-developers
• https://www.theguardian.com/info/2022/feb/25/how-we-have-changed-our-application-and-hiring-processes

The closing date for applications is Monday, 1st April.

All roles at the Guardian are open for everybody to apply. It is important to us that you feel supported and comfortable throughout your recruitment process, in order to perform your best. Please let us know if there are any changes we could make to the application process to make it easier and more comfortable for you. Please contact Karen on karen.walter@guardian.co.uk to discuss further so we can work with you to support you through your application.