Tech hiring Software engineering
Hire mobile developers who ship to the stores.
A mobile developer builds the app that lives on your customer’s phone, natively in Swift or Kotlin or across both platforms with React Native or Flutter. We shortlist people who have taken an app through review, release and the awkward months afterwards, when real devices and real networks find the bugs.
01 The role
What a mobile developer does, and what they ship.
A mobile developer builds and releases the apps people install from the App Store and Google Play, for iOS, Android or both. They turn designs into screens that follow each platform’s conventions, connect them to your API, store data on the device, wire up push notifications, payments and sign-in, and get each build signed, reviewed and published.
The difficulty is everything a browser hides from you. The connection drops halfway through a request. The operating system kills the app in the background. A release cannot be rolled back once people have installed it, so some customers will run an old version for a year and your API has to keep serving them. Add low-end Android phones, permission prompts and store review rules, and careful engineering starts to matter a great deal.
Current practice is declarative UI on both platforms, SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose, with structured concurrency underneath. Cross-platform work is mostly React Native, usually with Expo, or Flutter; Kotlin Multiplatform is growing for sharing logic alone. A good cross-platform developer still reads native code, because sooner or later a library, a crash or a store requirement sends them there.
What they ship
- Consumer apps on iOS and Android, from onboarding to in-app purchase
- Offline-first apps for field staff, agents and delivery drivers
- Mobile banking, wallet and payment flows with biometric sign-in
- Push notifications, deep links and background sync
- Native modules that expose camera, Bluetooth, maps or NFC to shared code
- Release pipelines: signing, beta distribution and staged rollouts
- Crash, performance and battery fixes on apps already in the stores
02 Skills and stack
Skills to look for, in three columns.
Nobody is equally deep in all of this. Tell us whether you need native iOS, native Android or one cross-platform codebase, and we shortlist against that choice.
Core
The role cannot be done without these.
- One platform in depth: Swift for iOS or Kotlin for Android
- Declarative UI: SwiftUI, Compose, React Native or Flutter
- App lifecycle, navigation and state management
- Networking, local storage and offline behaviour
- Async code: Swift concurrency, coroutines or Dart isolates
- Signing, store submission and release management
- Debugging and profiling on real devices
Tooling
Varies from team to team.
- Xcode, Instruments and TestFlight
- Android Studio, Gradle and Play Console
- React Native with Expo and TypeScript
- Flutter and Dart (Riverpod or Bloc)
- Kotlin Multiplatform
- Firebase: Cloud Messaging, Crashlytics, Remote Config
- Fastlane, EAS Build, Bitrise or Codemagic
- Room, Core Data, SwiftData or SQLite
- XCTest, Espresso, Maestro or Detox
- Sentry or Crashlytics for crash reporting
Adjacent
Useful, not required.
- REST, GraphQL and WebSocket API design
- OAuth 2.0, passkeys, Keychain and Keystore
- In-app purchases and subscriptions (StoreKit, Play Billing)
- Accessibility: VoiceOver, TalkBack, dynamic type
- App-store optimisation and product analytics
- UIKit and Android Views in older codebases
03 When to hire one
Hire a mobile developer for the right problem, or hire someone else.
We would sooner point you to a different role than fill the wrong one. Both lists are worth a minute.
Hire a mobile developer when
-
The app is how customers reach you
Orders, payments or daily use happen on a phone. Store ratings and crash rates now show up in your revenue, and nobody on the team owns them.
-
An agency built the app and handed back the keys
It works, but each operating-system update breaks something and every change needs a new quote. You need someone who owns the codebase and the store accounts.
-
Web developers are maintaining it between other work
They cope with screens and API calls, then lose days to signing certificates, a rejected build or a crash that only appears on one Android vendor’s phones.
-
You need hardware or the app to work offline
Camera scanning, Bluetooth devices, background location or a full day’s work without signal are beyond what a wrapped website does well.
-
You are merging two native apps, or splitting one
Moving to React Native or Flutter, or back to native, is a decision with years of consequences. It goes better with someone who has lived with both.
Look elsewhere when
-
A responsive website would do the job
If people use it occasionally and it needs no device features, a well-built web app costs less to build and far less to keep current. Start there and add an app when usage justifies it.
Hire React developers -
The backend the app depends on does not exist yet
A mobile developer can consume an API; designing the data model, authentication and server logic is a different job. Hire for it, or ask for full-stack explicitly.
Hire full-stack developers -
The flows and screens have not been designed
Mobile interfaces are unforgiving of improvised layouts. Get the journeys and the visual system settled first, then build.
Hire designers -
You want version one on both stores and have no engineers
A first release needs design, backend, mobile and testing at once. One mobile hire working alone will stall on everything outside their part.
See dedicated teams -
The app is finished and needs small changes a few times a year
That does not fill a full-time role. A freelance developer on a milestone basis is the better fit.
Post a freelance project
04 How we assess
Four stages, before a mobile developer reaches your shortlist.
A CV says what someone claims. We test what they can do, then send you the evidence with the shortlist.
-
Stage 1
Profile review
We look for apps we can install: store listings, their update history and, where available, the code. We check which parts the candidate wrote, whether they handled release and signing themselves, and how long they stayed with the app after launch.
-
Stage 2
Technical test
A timed test in the candidate’s platform language, covering lifecycle, concurrency, memory and state, with a coding exercise that involves building a screen which loads data, survives a failed request and keeps its state.
-
Stage 3
Conversation with our team
Our engineers ask the candidate to walk through an app they shipped: how it behaved offline, how they found a crash they could not reproduce, what a store rejection taught them, and how old versions were kept working against a changing API.
-
Stage 4
Review and levelling
Reviewers score accuracy, speed, problem-solving, communication and teamwork, then assign a level from our engineering framework. For mobile roles the notes state which platforms the person is deep in and which they have only touched.
-
Then
Your shortlist
Assessed candidates, with notes and scores.
The engine
Evalia
Assessments run on Evalia, the assessment platform we built ourselves. Across the ProDevs network, more than 100,000 assessments have been completed.
The levels we assign are public. Read the engineering framework, or see how a hire runs from brief to offer.
05 Seniority
Same title, different scope. What each level can own.
The title on a CV tells you little. What matters is how much a mobile developer can be handed without someone checking each step.
Junior
Owns a screen or a small feature
- Builds screens from a design inside an existing navigation and state structure
- Calls an API, handles loading and error states, and writes basic tests
- Needs help with signing, release, background work and platform-specific bugs
- Works best alongside a senior mobile developer who reviews every change
Mid-level
Owns a feature through release
- Takes a flow from design to the stores, including offline and failure cases
- Handles push notifications, deep links and permissions without supervision
- Reads crash reports, reproduces the fault on a device and ships the fix
- Runs a staged rollout and knows when to halt one
Senior
Owns the app and its architecture
- Decides native or cross-platform and can defend the choice in cost and risk
- Sets module structure, data layer, test approach and the release pipeline
- Plans API versioning and forced upgrades with the backend team
- Writes native code when a cross-platform library falls short
Indicative salary
Mobile developers (iOS, Android). Annual, in US dollars, for remote roles with US, UK and EU companies.
- Mid-level
- $28–48k
- Senior
- $48–75k
- Typical US equivalent
- $115–185k
Indicative market ranges as of August 2026, based on ProDevs placement experience and published market data. The exact figure depends on stack, seniority and time-zone requirements. See the full cost breakdown.
06 Interview questions
Questions for mobile developers, and what to listen for.
None of these has one right answer. The way someone answers tells you how they work.
-
What happens to your app when the user switches away for ten minutes and comes back?
A good answer shows: A precise account of the lifecycle on their platform: the process may have been killed, in-memory state is gone, and the screen must be restored from saved state or storage. A weak answer assumes the app is simply still running.
-
A user submits a payment and loses signal before the response arrives. What does your app do?
A good answer shows: They talk about idempotency keys, a pending state the user can see, retry with backoff and reconciling with the server on reconnect. Showing an error and letting the user tap again is how double charges happen.
-
Tell me about a crash you could not reproduce on your own device. How did you find it?
A good answer shows: A method: symbolicated crash reports grouped by device and OS version, breadcrumbs, a hypothesis, then a test device or emulator that matches. Listen for what they added afterwards so the next one is easier to trace.
-
You ship a breaking API change. Some users are still on a version from last year. What now?
A good answer shows: They version the API, keep old clients working for a defined period, and have a forced-upgrade or minimum-version mechanism that was built before it was needed. “Users should update” is not a plan.
-
When would you choose React Native or Flutter, and when would you insist on native?
A good answer shows: Reasons tied to the product: team skills, how much platform-specific UI and hardware work there is, release cadence and long-term maintenance. Be wary of anyone who gives the same answer for every app.
-
A long list scrolls badly on a cheap Android phone. Where do you look?
A good answer shows: They profile on the slow device first, then check recomposition or re-render counts, image sizes and decoding, work on the main thread and list item recycling. Guessing at fixes on a flagship phone tells you nothing.
-
Describe your release process from merged code to every user having the build.
A good answer shows: Automated signing and build, internal and beta tracks, a staged rollout with crash-rate checks, and a clear rule for halting. Strong candidates mention store review time and how they plan around it for urgent fixes.
07 Ways to engage
Four ways to bring a mobile developer in.
A permanent hire is the usual route, not the only one. Choose by how long the work lasts and who should employ the person.
- Placement fee, of first-year salary. One-time.
- 10–15%
- Replacement guarantee on direct hires.
- 2 weeks
- To a first shortlist, for most roles.
- 48h
-
Direct hire
A permanent employee on your contract and your payroll. One-time placement fee of 10–15% of first-year salary.
Tech hiring -
Dedicated team
A mobile developer inside a team we assemble and run for you: product, design and engineering on your roadmap, for a monthly retainer.
Dedicated teams -
Outsourcing & payroll
A full-time person in a country where you have no legal entity. ProDevs employs and pays them: 20% of salary if we find the person for you, or 5% of salary, capped at $500 a month, for payroll and compliance on someone you have already chosen.
Outsourcing -
Freelance project
A defined piece of work with a clear end. You pay the agreed price per milestone through escrow, plus a 5% client fee. Free to post.
Freelancers
08 Around the role
Around the role: who a mobile developer works with.
A mobile developer is often the only person on the team who knows the platform, which makes them the owner of the store accounts, the release calendar and every “can the phone do this?” question. In larger teams they sit in a squad beside backend and design.
- Product designer
- Agrees which patterns follow iOS and Android conventions and which are shared, before screens are drawn twice.
- Backend developer
- Negotiates payload sizes, pagination, versioning and what the API returns to an app that is three releases old.
- QA tester
- Shares a device matrix and decides together which journeys are automated and which are checked by hand before release.
- Product manager
- Plans releases around store review, staged rollouts and the fact that a shipped build cannot be withdrawn.
- DevOps engineer
- Relies on build runners, signing secrets and pipelines that produce the same binary every time.
09 Client testimonials
Hear it first-hand, from companies that hired.
Founders, operators and executives describe working with ProDevs, in their own words.
Play video: Client testimonial: Olufemi Seyi, COO, Casafina development company
Play video: Client testimonial: Aproko Doctor, Building AwaDoc
Play video: Client testimonial: JT Liddell, Promenade CEO
10 Questions
Hiring mobile developers, answered.
Something else? Book a call (opens in a new tab) and ask us directly.
-
Should we build native or cross-platform?
Cross-platform with React Native or Flutter suits most business apps: one codebase, one team, and near-native results for forms, lists and content. Go native when the app depends heavily on platform features such as advanced camera work, widgets, wearables or demanding graphics, or when you already have separate iOS and Android teams. A senior mobile developer should be able to argue either side for your product.
-
Can one mobile developer cover both iOS and Android?
With React Native or Flutter, yes, and that is the usual setup for a small team. With native code it is rare to find someone equally strong in Swift and Kotlin; most developers have a main platform and a working knowledge of the other. Say in the brief which matters more.
-
What should a mobile developer know in 2026?
Declarative UI in SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, React Native or Flutter; structured concurrency; offline storage and sync; push notifications and deep links; automated signing and release; and how to read crash and performance data from production. Familiarity with store privacy and billing rules matters more each year, because those rules decide whether a build is accepted.
-
How do you assess mobile developers?
In four stages. We review apps the candidate has shipped, set a timed technical test in their platform language, hold a conversation with our engineering team about an app they built and released, then review the results together and assign an engineering level. The assessments run on Evalia, and the notes come with your shortlist.
-
What does a mobile developer in Africa cost?
For remote roles with US, UK and EU companies, indicative annual salary ranges are $15,000–$25,000 for junior mobile developers, $28,000–$48,000 at mid-level and $48,000–$75,000 at senior level. These are market ranges, not quotes. A direct hire through ProDevs also carries a one-time placement fee of 10–15% of first-year salary.
-
Can a React developer build our mobile app instead?
They can make a good start in React Native, since the component model is the same. What they usually lack is the platform side: signing, store review, background limits, native modules and device-specific bugs. For an internal tool that may be acceptable. If the app is your main product, hire someone who has shipped and maintained one.
Talk to ProDevs
Tell us about the role.
Tell us the level and the stack. We will tell you how quickly we can put assessed mobile developers in front of you.
Project work
Need it for a project instead?
Not every job needs a full-time hire. Describe the work, get proposals from vetted freelance mobile developers, and pay per milestone through escrow. Free to post.