Android Engineer (Senior-Staff Levels)

About Cantina:

Cantina Labs is a social AI company, developing a suite of advanced real-time models that push the boundaries of expression, personality, and realism. We bring characters to life, transforming how people tell stories, connect, and create. We build and power ecosystems. Cantina, our flagship social AI platform, is just the beginning.

If you're excited about the potential AI has to shape human creativity and social interactions, join us in building the future!

About the Role:

As an Android Engineer at Cantina, you’ll lead the development of innovative, high-performance features - from crafting personalized feeds and immersive custom UIs to empowering bots with AI-driven capabilities like chatting, text-to-speech, voice selection, image creation, and real-time media effects. Working closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Sean Parker, you’ll influence the direction of a product central to the company’s mission, move quickly to deliver impactful updates, and enjoy the autonomy to bring your ideas to life.

We’re looking for someone who thrives on pushing the limits of Android development and has a passion for creating visually stunning, high-performance experiences. Your expertise in custom graphics, animation frameworks, and media pipelines will help shape the creative foundation of our flagship app.

What you'll do:

• Build and ship high-quality Android features using Jetpack Compose, Kotlin Coroutines, and modern Android architecture patterns.

• Develop and optimize video/audio pipelines, real-time media effects, and AI-powered visual features on Android.

• Craft immersive custom UI experiences with deep expertise in Compose animations, custom drawing, and motion design.

• Leverage deep Android internals knowledge - memory management, rendering pipeline, Choreographer, RenderThread - to deliver buttery-smooth performance.

• Architect and maintain clean MVVM application structure with well-separated concerns across UI, domain, and data layers.

• Set up and manage dependency injection using Koin or Hilt, ensuring scalable and testable module graphs.

• Participate in architecture discussions and uphold high standards for code quality, testability, and maintainability.

• Collaborate with Product, Design, and QA teams to deliver polished, scalable experiences.

• Take ownership of features as part of a small, fast-moving team shipping to a large user base.

What you'll bring:

• 8+ years of experience developing Android applications, or equivalent.

• Expert-level Kotlin - idiomatic usage, coroutines, Flow, and advanced language features.

• Deep Jetpack Compose expertise: custom layouts, state management, animation APIs (Animatable, Transition, AnimationSpec), and performance profiling.

• Strong command of MVVM architecture and the Android architecture components ecosystem (ViewModel, LiveData/StateFlow, Room, Navigation, WorkManager).

• Hands-on experience with dependency injection using Koin or Hilt in production Android apps.

• Strong understanding of Android internals: View system, RenderThread, Choreographer, garbage collection, and battery/memory profiling.

• Experience with media frameworks: ExoPlayer, MediaCodec, Camera2/CameraX, and real-time effects.

• Ability to write readable, maintainable, documented, and well-tested code.

• Experience with RESTful API integrations and proficiency with Git.

• Keen attention to detail, motion, and animation - you notice when something is 2px off.

• Bonus: experience with AI-driven media features, real-time video/audio effects, or WebRTC on Android.

Compensation:

The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is between $180,000-$240,000. When determining compensation, a number of factors will be considered, including skills, experience, job scope, location, and competitive compensation market data.

Benefits:

• Competitive salary and generous company equity

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance - 99.99% of premiums covered by Cantina

• 42 days of paid time off, including:

  • 15 PTO days

  • 10 sick days

  • 15 company holidays

  • 2 floating holidays

• Generous parental leave & fertility support

• 401(k) retirement savings plan

• Lifestyle spending account - $500/month to use however you’d like

• Complimentary lunch and snacks for in-office employees

• One Medical membership, and more!