Founding Mobile Engineer (React Native)

Founding Mobile Engineer (React Native)

Whip (by Tensorfuse) is a social platform where anyone can create and share mini apps in seconds. We're backed by Y Combinator, and building at the intersection of AI and consumer social.

As a founding mobile engineer, you'll own the core app experience that millions of creators will use to build, share, and discover mini apps. This is not a "build screens from Figma specs" role. This is a "make the app feel magic" role.

What You'll Do

Build and ship the Whip mobile app in React Native across iOS and Android. You'll own critical surfaces like the mini app runtime, feed, creation flow, and sharing experience. You'll work directly with the founders and the founding designer to move from idea to shipped feature in days, not sprints. You'll make architectural decisions that define how the app scales. You'll obsess over performance, animation smoothness, and interaction feel — because in a consumer app, 200ms of jank is the difference between delight and deletion.

Who You Are

You're a builder who ships fast and cares deeply about craft. You've built React Native apps that real people use and love. You understand that consumer mobile is a different game — every frame matters, every transition matters, every tap target matters. You're comfortable going deep into native modules when React Native isn't enough, and you have opinions about state management, navigation patterns, and how to make a WebView not feel like a WebView.

Required Qualifications

2+ years building production React Native apps (not just Expo demos)

Deep understanding of React Native internals: bridge, JSI, Fabric, new architecture

Experience with smooth animations using Reanimated and Gesture Handler

Ability to write native modules in Swift/Kotlin when the JS layer isn't enough

Strong understanding of mobile performance profiling and optimization

Experience integrating WebViews with tight native-to-web communication

Familiarity with real-time features: feeds, notifications, live updates

Comfort with fast iteration cycles — you ship daily, not quarterly

Solid fundamentals in TypeScript and modern React patterns

Nice to Have

Experience building consumer or social apps with high DAU

Familiarity with mini app or plugin architectures (WebView sandboxing, JS runtimes)

Experience with OTA updates (CodePush or similar)

Understanding of content-driven feeds and recommendation surfaces

Contributions to open source React Native libraries

Previous startup experience or founding engineer background

Experience with AI-assisted development workflows

How to Apply

Send us a link to an app you've built — on the App Store, Play Store, or a video demo. Walk us through the hardest technical problem you solved in it. Show us your code if you can. That matters more than a resume.