Senior/Staff iOS Engineer (iOS Lead) at Ethena Labs

Worldwide

<h3><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-4e91902c-7fff-7068-3978-e0d1ae21fc50">Role Overview</strong></span></h3><p><span>The lead iOS Engineer is a strong IC who is also the technical authority and primary shipper for our native app, the primary way users hold and move money. You’ll own the app end-to-end: building, signing, and releasing it at a quality bar fit for a money app, in both engineering rigor and visual craft. In a consumer money app, polish is trust, so the app needs to feel fast, fluid, and pixel-perfect, using modern iOS design (Liquid Glass, SF Symbols, Dynamic Type).</span></p><p><span>Every iOS question routes through you. You’ll own the passkey/WebAuthn auth surface and the App Store release pipeline, and set the direction the rest of mobile grows in. This is a hands-on role with real decision authority: the app ships on your word, and you set the bar for how it’s built.</span></p><h3><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-4e91902c-7fff-7068-3978-e0d1ae21fc50">Role Responsibilities</strong></span></h3><ul><li><p><span>Be the top contributor. Write and ship the majority of the app yourself — the hardest surfaces, the critical path, the polish — as the most productive hands-on developer on the team, not a lead who reviews from the sidelines.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Own the native iOS app end-to-end — architecture, build, and quality bar — across both engineering rigor and visual craft.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Coordinate the App Store release pipeline: certificates, provisioning profiles, entitlements, associated domains, and TestFlight/App Store submission.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Own core app surfaces with full design authority, keeping each legible, documented, and easy for the team to build on.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Raise the iOS quality and visual-craft bar, enforce a test strategy in review, and close UI/polish gaps against the Liquid Glass design language.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Act as the default reviewer and decision-maker on iOS, mentoring the team and setting the technical standard others build against.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Set mobile direction and drive the roadmap, laying the foundation a phase-2 Android hire and future iOS engineers will build on.</span></p></li></ul><h3><span><strong id="docs-internal-guid-4e91902c-7fff-7068-3978-e0d1ae21fc50">Required Skills and Experience</strong></span></h3><ul><li><p><span>Shipped and maintained native iOS apps handling real money or sensitive financial/crypto data, from a world-class consumer app where design is a competitive advantage (Revolut, Monzo, Cash App, Robinhood, Coinbase, or a design-led crypto app).</span></p></li><li><p><span>Strong Swift + SwiftUI — modern concurrency (async / await, actors), state and navigation architecture, performance, and memory; you ship polished, reliable UI.</span></p></li><li><p><span>A track record of visually excellent, pixel-perfect apps — you can point to shipped apps (App Store links / portfolio) that look and feel great, are faithful to design down to the detail, and use motion and haptics well. You work hand-in-hand with designers (Figma) and hold the line on craft. Hands-on with the modern iOS design language, including Liquid Glass (iOS 26)</span></p></li><li><p><span>You've integrated the classes of SDK a money app relies on — several of: passkeys / WebAuthn (ASAuthorization), embedded-wallet / auth infra (Privy, or Dynamic / Turnkey / Magic), WalletConnect / Reown, a KYC SDK (SumSub, Onfido, Persona), account funding / aggregation (Mesh, or Plaid-class), and push / attribution (Firebase, AppsFlyer).</span></p></li><li><p><span>Secure on-device handling — Keychain, biometric gating, and disciplined avoidance of token/PII leakage to logs or analytics.</span></p></li><li><p><span>Comfortable owning and evolving a large existing iOS codebase, with the judgment to set technical direction.</span></p></li><li><p><span>You're agent-native. You wield agentic development — coding agents (e.g. Claude Code), MCP servers, reusable skills — as a force multiplier, and can explain where it does and doesn't apply on iOS work. Fluent, not a dabbler; you verify output.</span></p></li></ul>