Android Engineer

About Us

At algo1, we are reinventing one of the world’s most familiar experiences: the in-store grocery trip. We are building an AI-native product that understands each shopper, responds to their context in real time and makes an everyday experience less stressful, more personal and more engaging.

We’re backed by leading investors and founded by two entrepreneurs: one with a track record of building and scaling companies, and the other a leader in retail data and shopper analytics. Together, they have brought together frontier AI researchers and engineers, product and strategy leaders, and senior operators from major UK and US grocery businesses.

The people who join now will have an opportunity to shape the product, the engineering culture, and what algo1 becomes.

The Role

You will report to our Head of Android, Kiril, and work closely with product, design, backend and edge AI specialists to build the consumer-facing product through which millions of shoppers could experience algo1.

This is native Kotlin development on our own application, running on a known device inside live grocery stores. That creates a distinctive set of engineering challenges around performance, reliability, lifecycle management and resilience in a demanding physical environment.

We are AI-native in how we build. Every engineer has access to frontier coding tools and our own development harness. We expect you to use them thoughtfully to move faster and tackle more ambitious work, while remaining fully accountable for the quality of what reaches shoppers.

What You’ll Own

• Shopper-facing features end to end. Take substantial Android features from the first product conversation through implementation, release and iteration in stores.

• On-device intelligence. Connect our edge AI capabilities to the shopper experience, turning machine-learning outputs into interactions that feel genuinely useful.

• Performance and reliability. Improve latency, stability, lifecycle behaviour and resilience on a controlled device operating in a live retail environment.

• The evolution of the codebase. Help establish the architecture, patterns and engineering standards that will support the product as it grows.

• Product judgement. Work closely with product and design to turn complex AI capabilities into interactions that feel fast, intuitive and personal.

• Production performance. Monitor released features, investigate problems and improve the experience using technical evidence and real shopper behaviour.

About You

Must Have

• Strong native Android and Kotlin experience. You understand Kotlin, coroutines, concurrency, memory management and the Android lifecycle, and can apply that knowledge in a demanding production environment.

• Jetpack Compose in production. You have built and shipped meaningful Compose features and understand how to create polished, performant interfaces.

• End-to-end ownership. You have taken features from a product problem through to launch and are comfortable being accountable for their performance.

• AI-enabled development. You have used tools such as Cursor, Claude Code or similar in meaningful development work and are keen to keep improving how you use them.

• Relevant experience. Typically, you will have around three plus years of Android engineering experience, although the quality and ownership of what you have built matters more than the number of years.

Nice to Have (or We Can Teach)

• Experience integrating on-device machine learning using ML Kit, TensorFlow Lite or custom models.

• Experience with reactive, event-driven or highly stateful Android applications.

• Experience working with device peripherals or hardware-adjacent Android products.

• Knowledge of Android build automation, release management or CI/CD.

How We Work

We're a startup, so this is a high-intensity environment. The people who thrive here are curious, proactive, and love building. If you're happiest when you're creating, experimenting, and moving fast, you'll love it here.

We draw our energy from being together, so this is an office-based role. It suits someone who enjoys the quick conversations and shared momentum that comes from building together. Our office is on what we think is the best garden square in London, just a couple of minutes from Tottenham Court Road, so it's easy to get to and a great place to build.

What We Offer

• Direct access to our founders and a real voice in decisions that shape the product and company.

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity.

• 25 days’ annual leave, plus bank holidays.

• A central London office.

• Team offsites.

• Cycle-to-work scheme.