iOS Engineer (Remote)

As an iOS Engineer at The Athletic, you will be responsible for maintaining and enhancing our mobile platform, focusing on creating high-quality applications that engage sports fans. Your daily tasks will include optimizing for performance and scalability, collaborating with other teams to ensure seamless integration, and writing unit tests for code quality. You'll have a significant impact on user-facing features while working in a supportive environment dedicated to your growth as a developer.

To be considered for the iOS Engineer role at The Athletic, candidates should have at least 2 years of professional experience in native iOS development using Swift. An understanding of multi-threaded networking and practical experience with the MVVM pattern are also important. Familiarity with SwiftUI is crucial, as our app utilizes it extensively. If you also have experience with GraphQL, that would be a plus!

Yes! The iOS Engineer position at The Athletic is fully remote, available to candidates based in the US and Canada. This means you'll have the flexibility to work from anywhere that suits your lifestyle while continuing to collaborate effectively with a talented team across various locations.

The salary range for the iOS Engineer position at The Athletic is set between $120,000.00 and $140,000.00 USD annually. Compensation may vary based on factors like experience, education, and location, and the total package may include additional non-cash rewards and benefits such as health insurance plans and retirement benefits.

As an iOS Engineer at The Athletic, you will work on improving existing features, refactoring code, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to build innovative solutions that enhance user experience. You'll be involved in the full lifecycle of mobile app development, including investigating and resolving production issues reported by users.

The Athletic is committed to fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement. As an iOS Engineer, you will have opportunities to stay updated with the latest industry practices, collaborate with knowledgeable colleagues, and actively engage in discussions around product decisions and development strategies, contributing to both your personal and professional growth.

The work culture at The Athletic is collaborative, inclusive, and focused on innovation. As an iOS Engineer, you'll find yourself in an environment that values creative input, encourages team collaboration, and supports work-life balance, allowing you to bring your best self to work and contribute significantly to exciting projects.

Be prepared to share specific projects where you've utilized Swift and SwiftUI. Discuss challenges you faced and how you overcame them. Highlight any particularly exciting features you've implemented using these technologies, as this can demonstrate your hands-on experience and understanding of performance optimization.

Explain your debugging process, emphasizing your systematic approach to identify problems. Describe tools you use, like Xcode's debugging features, and any practices you follow such as logging or using breakpoints. Provide examples from your past work where you successfully resolved complex bugs.

Discuss your understanding of the MVVM pattern, detailing how it separates concerns between the UI and business logic. Share specific examples of how you've implemented MVVM in your past projects, focusing on how it improved maintainability and workflow efficiency.

Describe a situation where you identified a performance bottleneck in an app. Discuss the strategies you implemented to optimize performance, such as code refactoring or lazy loading images. Highlight the measurable outcomes, like increased speed or decreased load times, to showcase your impact.

Talk about best practices like writing unit and functional tests, code reviews, and consistent refactoring. Discuss how you use automated testing tools to maintain code quality and provide an example of a time when these strategies helped prevent issues in production.

Express your commitment to continuous learning by mentioning resources you follow, such as blogs, podcasts, and social media accounts of influential developers. Discuss any conferences or meetups you've attended or online courses you've taken to stay ahead in the field.

Share a specific instance of a bug that was particularly challenging. Discuss your thought process, the steps you took to troubleshoot, and how you arrived at a resolution. Highlight the importance of persistence and collaboration in these cases.

Assume the interviewer may want to see your thought process on utilizing GraphQL. Talk about how it allows for more efficient data fetching and how you would structure your queries. Share past experiences where applicable, or discuss the research you’ve done on integrating GraphQL.

Discuss elements like intuitive navigation, quick access to necessary information, and engaging UI components. Provide examples from your experience where you contributed to enhancing user experience in sports applications, and show your understanding of the unique demands from sports fans.

Explain your thought process for feature prioritization, considering user needs, app performance, and technical feasibility. Discuss specific features like real-time data updates, personalized notifications, and analytics, mentioning how they would enhance user engagement.