Senior Android Engineer

Why Thunderbird?

MZLA Technologies Corporation (MZLA) is a wholly-owned, for-profit subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and the home of Thunderbird. Thunderbird is a global, free, and open-source email and productivity app, which has experienced significant growth in revenue, staff, and aspirations since its launch 20 years ago. Our revenue comes from our dedicated users around the world who generously fund our work. As we continue to expand our team and enhance our products and services, we remain dedicated to providing best-in-class productivity solutions independent of big tech. Operating as a small but dynamic team of 40 + staff across seven countries and time zones, we are part of the larger Mozilla family but maintain our distinct and independent identity from both the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation.

Our organizational culture is driven by our mission. We are committed to fostering openness and transparency as a member of the open-source community. We lean into collaboration, creativity, and diversity. We bring a hearty dose of scrappy grit and resilience to our lively and spirited team. Our operating principles leverage data informed decisions, ownership, speed and efficiencies to elevate our work and deliver innovative and impactful solutions to our users.

The Opportunity:

As a Senior Software Engineer for Android at MZLA, you will play a key role in shaping Thunderbird’s mobile platform. With a successful launch of Thunderbird for Android in 2024, we’ve set a baseline for you to expand on.  You will be delivering improvements to hundreds of thousands of email users worldwide, and building exciting features that support productivity. You have the opportunity to evolve the application architecture, create best practices, and implement new Android features as the platform changes.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned engineer who will have deep expertise in mobile application development for Android, with experience using languages and frameworks such as Kotlin and Jetpack Compose. You have a proven ability to work with mature codebases, identifying opportunities to modernize, optimize, and enhance long-term sustainability within open-source environments.

This is a leading role with the opportunity to shape technical direction and ensure exceptional performance. This role focuses on evolving the mobile platform to meet the needs of Thunderbird’s global user base.

We’re committed to creating an amazing experience for our users, and you’ll play a key part in this effort. As part of the MZLA Mobile team you will be working with our existing staff and community members from all over the globe to support the mission and objectives of MZLA Technologies Corp and the Thunderbird Project. Additionally, you’ll have the opportunity to engage with other mobile engineers across the broader Mozilla ecosystem. 

The Sr Software Engineer, Android is an individual contributor and will report directly to the Senior Manager, Mobile Engineering. 

This is a remote, full time position. We require strong written communication skills to facilitate effective work coordination across various virtual communication platforms such as email and video conferencing.

This role works closely with staff across Europe, US and Canada. Consequently, applicants in the Eastern Standard or Western/Central European Standard time zones are strongly preferred.

What you’ll do: 

• Build and refine Thunderbird’s mobile products and platform architecture, ensuring scalability, performance, reliability, and user-centered design.
• Develop a deep understanding of the codebase and architecture to confidently make changes across the entire stack.
• Develop and maintain strong debugging and testing practices, utilizing unit, integration, and automated testing frameworks to ensure software quality and reliability.
• Conduct thorough code reviews and provide guidance on architectural improvements, test integration and development best practices.
• Independently resolve technical challenges, including performance bottlenecks, security vulnerabilities and cross-platform integration.
• Monitor application vitals and identify potential issues before they escalate.
• Document technical decisions, systems architecture, and te