Payward — the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services, and CF Benchmarks — has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry. We are hiring a Mobile Design Engineer in the United Arab Emirates to join the Consumer Mobile team, owning the feel of the Kraken app used by over 10 million individuals and institutions worldwide.
About Kraken & the Consumer Mobile Team
Founded: 2011, one of the world’s longest-standing crypto platforms
Scale: Trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe
Products: Spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services
Team Focus: The Consumer Mobile team builds the Kraken app in React Native, caring deeply about how the product feels
Career Opportunity in Fintech Mobile Engineering
Craft-First Role: Treats design and engineering as one craft, not two separate practices
Technical Depth: Work with Reanimated, Skia, native bridges, and JS/UI thread optimization
High-Stakes Product: On a product where people move their savings, motion and interaction build trust
Career Growth: Globally distributed team, encouraging applicants to apply even without meeting every requirement
Position Overview
This Mobile Design Engineer role involves owning the feel of the Kraken app — the half-second a trade confirms, the way a chart loads, how a sheet rises from the bottom of the screen and lands where it physically should. This is a mobile-first role on a React Native codebase, working in Reanimated and Skia, bridging to native when needed, and closely managing the split between the JS thread and the UI thread.
Why This Role Matters: As Mobile Design Engineer at Kraken, you own the motion and interaction layer that millions of people experience every time they interact with their money, evolve the mobile design system that other engineers rely on daily, partner directly with product designers to elevate motion and interaction from concept to implementation, optimize rendering performance where frame drops are unforgivable, and raise the bar for what “great” means across the entire mobile engineering org.
Key Responsibilities
Motion & Interaction Ownership
- Own the motion and interaction layer of the Kraken app: easing, springs, gestures, transitions, haptics, sound
- Cover the perceptual surface from cold start to confirmation
- Evolve the mobile design system, owning components like gesture handlers, transition primitives, and motion tokens
Design Partnership & Performance
- Partner closely with product designers, challenging and elevating motion and interaction design
- Profile and optimize rendering performance, especially on lower-end Android devices
- Contribute to architectural decisions affecting UI responsiveness: state management, render cycles, and data flow
Standards & Team Elevation
- Raise the bar for what “great” means across the mobile organization through review and example
- Write patterns that make doing the right thing easier than doing the wrong thing
Qualifications & Requirements
What You Bring
- A portfolio: demo reel, personal site, GitHub of interaction sketches, or screen captures of shipped work
- Deep React Native fluency, including strong Reanimated knowledge and gesture handler experience
- Ability to profile JS thread vs. UI thread work and read a frame timeline
- Taste in motion: opinions about easing curves and the ability to articulate why a transition feels wrong
- Product judgment: ability to take a half-formed brief and ship something better than what was asked
- Comfort using AI tools (Cursor, Copilot, Claude, etc.) as part of your workflow
- Strong written and verbal English for a globally distributed, async team
Nice to Have
- React Native Skia, shader work, or custom canvas-based rendering experience
- Real native experience — enough Swift or Kotlin to write a bridge module
- A motion library, design-system contribution, or interaction primitive set adopted by other engineers
- A visual or motion design background, prototyping in Figma, After Effects, or on paper
- High-stakes product experience in fintech, trading, health, or other UI-precision-critical industries
About Working at Payward & Kraken
Payward is powered by people from around the world, celebrating diverse talents, backgrounds, and perspectives, and hires based on merit — seeking the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. The company encourages applicants to apply for roles even when they don’t fully meet every listed requirement, especially if they’re passionate about crypto. As an equal opportunity employer, Payward does not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any protected characteristic, and considers qualified applicants with criminal histories consistent with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Career Excellence: Shape the motion and interaction craft behind an app trusted by over 10 million people worldwide.
Who Should Apply?
- React Native Motion Specialists: Deeply fluent in Reanimated, gestures, and animation performance
- Design-Engineering Hybrids: Who treat design and engineering as one unified craft
- Performance-Focused Engineers: Skilled in profiling rendering and thread performance on mobile
- Fintech/Crypto-Curious Talent: Passionate or knowledgeable about crypto, even without a perfect resume match
- Portfolio-Driven Candidates: With a demo reel or GitHub showcasing shipped interaction work
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