Mobile Staff Engineer

Mobile Staff Engineer

This is a hybrid role working from home and our offices in either London or Leicester.

Home. There’s no place like it. And there’s no feeling like helping people create the joy of feeling truly at home. At Dunelm, that’s what we do.

We’re the UK's number one choice for homewares because we make home life lovelier for our customers. And the caring and supportive culture we've created makes this a place you'll feel right at home too.

Software Engineering

Our Engineering Department plays a crucial role in driving our company's growth, and we are committed to providing our team with the latest tools, technologies, and techniques to help them excel and take us to new heights. With our continuous growth, we are seeking talented and ambitious individuals to join our dynamic team and contribute their unique ideas and perspectives. We are an ever-expanding team where every voice counts!

Role Summary

A strategically important role within the Technology team, the Mobile Staff Engineer will lead the technical direction and execution of our mobile initiatives, working in close partnership with a third-party development team. You’ll contribute to the definition and execution of our engineering strategy, with a particular focus on mobile integration, API design, and service alignment.

This high-impact position demands mobile expertise, architectural rigour, and strong communication skills to ensure seamless alignment between internal engineering goals and external delivery. Through thoughtful collaboration and technical leadership, the Mobile Staff Engineer will help shape how our mobile experiences are built, integrated, and evolved to meet the needs of our customers and the wider business.

As one of the few mobile specialists within the organisation, the Mobile Staff Engineer will act as a hands-on contributor, internal consultant, and technical leader. You’ll help raise the bar for mobile-aware engineering practices, mentor others, and play a key role in building our internal capability and confidence in delivering high-quality mobile experiences.

Ultimately, the Mobile Staff Engineer will play a key role in shaping and delivering our mobile engineering strategy, working in close collaboration with Principal Engineers and third-party development partners. This role is instrumental in ensuring our mobile experiences are seamlessly connected to internal systems and aligned with our broader engineering goals.

What this role requires of you:

• Champion the integration of mobile applications with internal APIs and services, ensuring a seamless, performant experience across all customer channels.
• Act as the internal technical lead for mobile, working closely with third-party app developers to guide architecture, integration, and platform alignment.
• Drive consistency in how mobile-facing APIs are designed, documented, and evolved, ensuring they are discoverable, testable, and resilient.
• Collaborate with Product Managers, Delivery Leads, Architects, Tech Leads, and Engineers to shape mobile-aware service contracts and integration patterns.
• Influence the design of API interfaces, payloads, and backing services to meet the specific needs of mobile platforms, including performance, offline support, and data efficiency.
• Advocate for mobile-aware engineering practices across teams, helping to embed mobile considerations into broader platform and service design.
• Identify and address mobile-specific performance bottlenecks and integration challenges, contributing to the reliability and scalability of the mobile experience.
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested integration code, setting a high standard for engineering excellence and operational readiness.
• Contribute to the resolution of incidents affecting mobile users, leveraging deep understanding of mobile architecture and service dependencies.
• Mentor and coach engineers across disciplines, sharing mobile-specific knowledge and fostering a culture of cross-platform collaboration.
• Play a key role in shaping the Engineering Guild’s roadmap, ensuring mobile integration needs are represented in platform and API strategies.
• Influence and contribute to relevant team outcomes by actively participating in architectural reviews, technical discovery, and cross-functional planning.
• Lead the development of Proof of Concepts/Proof of Value initiatives to validate new mobile integration approaches and service capabilities.
• Partner with Technical Leads and Principal Engineers to shape the mobile integration strategy and contribute to the long-term technical vision.
• Stay current with emerging trends in mobile development, platform capabilities, and integration tooling, guiding the chapter on best practices and innovations.

Essential skills:

• Strong proficiency in backend and integration engineering practices, with hands-on experience delivering mobile-facing services in Agile environments.
• Solid understanding of mobile architecture principles and platform capabilities across iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin), with the ability to guide integration decisions accordingly.
• Experience working with internal APIs and services to support mobile applications, with a focus on performance, reliability, and multichannel compatibility.
• Proven ability to collaborate with and mentor autonomous, highly skilled engineers across disciplines, fostering technical growth and alignment.
• Demonstrable ability to communicate and influence effectively within a matrix organisation, ensuring seamless collaboration across product, engineering, and third-party teams.
• Strong experience working closely with business stakeholders and external partners, translating strategic goals into robust mobile integration solutions.
• Comprehensive understanding of technology trends, with deep expertise in mobile-aware service design, API lifecycle management, and integration patterns.
• Hands-on experience with cloud-native technologies (e.g. AWS), mobile backend services, and API gateways, reflecting the essential toolkit for mobile-integrated engineering.
• Expertise in CI/CD practices, automated testing, and observability for mobile-integrated systems, ensuring high-quality, resilient, and maintainable solutions.

Desirable skills

• Experience working within a multichannel retail or manufacturing environment, with an understanding of how mobile apps interact with backend systems across web, mobile, and in-store experiences.
• Familiarity with mobile-specific architectural patterns, such as offline-first design, background syncing, and efficient data handling on constrained devices.
• Understanding of API design considerations for mobile platforms, including payload optimisation, caching strategies, and network efficiency.
• Experience with GraphQL in mobile contexts, including schema design and client-side integration patterns.
• Knowledge of mobile performance monitoring and optimisation techniques, including crash analytics, cold start profiling, and instrumentation.
• Awareness of how backend service design impacts mobile UX, including latency, error handling, and data consistency.
• Strong grasp of mobile security best practices, including secure storage, authentication flows (e.g. OAuth2, biometrics), and secure communication.
• Awareness of handling Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in mobile contexts, including encryption, masking, and compliance with data protection regulations such as GDPR.

Behaviours

• Customer First: You should prioritize the customer experience and continuously seek ways to improve it.
• Strategic thinking: You should be able to think strategically and see the big picture, aligning technical decisions with business objectives and anticipating future technology trends.
• Team Working: You should be a team player and effectively collaborate with colleagues to achieve common goals. You should be able to lead and inspire a team of engineers, creating a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and innovation.
• Innovating: You should have a curious and explorative mindset, continuously seeking out new technologies and methodologies that can drive business growth and enhance products, services, and processes.
• Make It Happen: You should take accountability for your work and actively identify technical challenges, developing and implementing solutions for teams in a timely and high-quality manner.
• Knowledge Advocate: You should drive a culture of collaborative learning by organising workshops and knowledge-sharing sessions. Actively promote information exchange, fostering a collective understanding and expertise within the organisation