Associate Android Developer

Join our team at the Guardian and be a part of a diverse and inclusive global organisation that delivers fearless, investigative journalism, and holds power to account. Our team of award-winning journalists, cutting-edge commercial professionals, and industry-leading digital experts are committed to making a difference and represent a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. We offer a challenging and exciting environment for career development, with a focus on training, growth and fostering an inclusive culture.

We’re recruiting for an Associate Android Developer. We create our award-winning Android app primarily in Kotlin 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.

Much of our code is openly available on GitHub, and some of our projects are widely used throughout the Open Source community. Many of our developers regularly attend and present at conferences. Please visit our Guardian Developers site and the Guardian Developer blog for more information about working in the team.

About the Role:

• Building and testing new features, improving and maintaining existing functionality with support from other developers. Our current codebase is about 90% Kotlin and 10% Java.
• Using Coroutines in Compose and working with Android Views and some legacy code, with support from other developers.
• Working in a strongly collaborative environment, including pair programming with other developers and working closely with designers, editorial and commercial colleagues.
• Contributing to team conversations and big decisions, we encourage everyone to voice their opinions and share ideas.
• Reviewing the code of other engineers to ensure we maintain our app’s high standard, with support from other developers as needed.
• Demonstrating your innovation day-to-day, as well as at our regular hack days and during 10% time.

About You:

• You have prior experience building and supporting the deployment of Android applications.
• Prior experience and confidence with Kotlin and Java.
• You aspire to be an expert in Android development, and you have a strong interest in growing your skills. You are keen to learn about what technologies are available to use and when to use them.
• You are creative, passionate and love technology. You may love the news, or you may want to reinvent it.
• Your interests go beyond just your team’s objectives; you are curious about where the organisation is moving as a whole. You take an interest in why we do things, and you're able to focus on delivering value for your team.

We believe diversity of people, backgrounds, experience and ideas helps us to build better products and achieve more. We welcome applicants who have taken traditional and non-traditional career paths into software development.

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 are 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.

Salary Information

We strive for transparency in remuneration. The salary band for Associate Android Developers at the Guardian is £40,000-60,000 per annum.

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:

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

Deadline for receipt of applications is Friday 28th March 2025.

Our interview process involves two stages: a face to face interview and a pairing test, either remotely or in person at the Guardian office. 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

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 help your application, this includes providing documents in accessible formats or personalising the process to better support your needs. Please contact Anna on anna.vipers@guardian.co.uk to discuss further so we can work with you to support you through your application.