Principal Apps Engineer

We are on a mission to be "the app you can't move without". As the UK's biggest property app and website, our native apps are a critical touchpoint for millions of home movers every month. As Principal Native Apps Engineer you provide expert technical leadership and strategic direction across our iOS and Android applications and the services that support them. You work at system level, understanding the end‑to‑end architecture, data flows and constraints across the Rightmove estate, and translate product strategy into coherent, scalable technical designs.

You remain hands‑on in the most critical work, setting the standard for code quality, testing and observability, and unblocking teams on difficult technical problems. You partner with senior product and engineering leaders to shape long‑term platform strategy and ensure our native apps continue to be a fast, reliable and delightful way for people to find their next home. Head to our tech blog to find out more about our engineering culture!

You lead the design and architecture of complex systems that span multiple apps, services and data pipelines, making clear trade‑offs and documenting decisions so they are easy to understand and evolve. You collaborate with cross‑discipline teams to map end‑to‑end flows and ensure designs are resilient, secure and cost‑effective. You remain hands‑on in key projects, participating in design, coding, testing and debugging of critical components, and you use your deep knowledge of platform‑specific features, APIs and performance characteristics to optimise app behaviour.

Through rigorous code reviews you uphold coding standards and development best practices, identify risks early and provide clear, constructive feedback that raises the quality of the whole team.

You are a widely recognised source of technical expertise and a mentor for other engineers. You foster a culture of learning by pairing, running design reviews and sharing knowledge across teams, and you help engineers grow into senior and staff roles. You identify and execute on high‑leverage opportunities where new or improved technical capabilities can unlock significant user and business value, and you work proactively with product and business owners to build the right road‑maps.

You deliver large, complex projects to a very high standard, even under ambiguity or time pressure, and you are quick to spot when work is not moving the needle and help teams refocus. You understand which technical and product levers matter most and how they interact across the organisation.

You provide technical input into product and technical planning, helping to shape initiative scope, estimates and risk assessments, and ensuring we sequence work in a way that enables learning. You continuously seek opportunities to improve performance, reliability and efficiency of our apps and supporting systems, implementing targeted optimisations and monitoring their impact against benchmarks. You push boundaries by generating and implementing innovative ideas that simplify systems, unlock new product possibilities or materially improve developer experience.

You encourage experimentation, create psychological safety and champion a growth mindset, while staying current with developments in the mobile and wider technology landscape and bringing relevant ideas back into the team.

You provide clear technical leadership for the native apps teams, drive adoption of sound design patterns and architectural principles, and ensure our platforms can scale as usage and product ambition grow. You collaborate closely with Product Owners, Product Designers, QA, Data and Backend engineering to maintain alignment on goals and delivery plans, and you explain complex technical concepts in a way that non‑technical stakeholders can act on.

You partner with senior leadership to define a long‑term vision that integrates business needs, market context and technical possibilities, and you influence the technical direction of multiple teams to execute that vision. You model a high standard of engineering quality and behaviour, invest time in coaching and…