Frontend & Mobile Lead

About the role

You will be the first frontend and mobile engineer at Whym, joining a small founding team. You will own the mobile app, the web app, and how every interaction feels in the user’s hands.

We want an engineer first. You are expert in React Native, or in native iOS and Android. You also flex into design and user research when the team needs it. You like sitting in on user tests, you care whether a transition feels right, and you would push back on a Figma file. This is the role.

This is a tiny startup. Everyone wears many hats. Everyone at Whym does customer support, including the CEO and CTO. You will too. Some weeks you will debug a render loop. Other weeks you will run a prototype past a tester, tighten a brand color, or respond to a user who had a bad experience. You should find that appealing, not beneath you.

What you will work on

• Mobile app development. Ship and maintain Whym's mobile app. Most users live there. You own the architecture, the build pipeline, and the performance budget. The stack is up for debate. You help decide it, then live with it.
• Web and frontend. Ship and own Whym's web app, the browser version of the product, on desktop and mobile. The marketing site is already shipped and small; keep it tidy. The web app deserves the same craft as the native mobile app.
• Interaction craft. The product feels good or it does not. You sweat animation timing, gesture response, transitions, haptics, and loading states. You bring opinions. You ship them. You catch what the rest of the team would let slide.
• Flex into design. The team is tiny. You extend a design system, make confident UI calls without a Figma file, and tell a designer when something is not working.
• Flex into research. Sit in on user sessions. Build the prototype that resolves an open question. Watch a user struggle and bring observations back. You do not need a research plan to be useful in research.
• Partner across the team. Work closely with the CEO and CTO. As the Quality Lead and Design Lead come on board, partner with them too. Write code that makes the rest of the team faster.

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years in engineering, with deep time on consumer mobile.
• Expert in React Native, or you have shipped serious iOS or Android apps natively. We are not religious about the stack, but we want someone who has shipped consumer mobile that real users depend on.
• Strong frontend chops too. You hold your own on web, including modern React, type systems, and the build tooling that goes with both.
• Real design sensibility. You have shipped UI you would defend on craft alone. You can extend a design system with taste and make sound UI calls in moments of ambiguity.
• Comfortable in research. You enjoy watching real users use your work. You take qualitative feedback seriously without overweighting any single voice.
• AI-native. You use modern AI tools every day. You ship faster because of them. You have opinions about which ones earn their place. You know what AI slop looks like and you do not turn it in as final work.
• Strong product instinct. You connect implementation choices to user outcomes. You know which tradeoff matters and can say why in plain language.
• Strong communicator. You document decisions. You disagree without posturing. You write well and present results without spin.
• Comfortable with ambiguity. You thrive at early stage where the stack, the design system, and the product are all moving at once.
• High agency. You notice what needs doing and do it without waiting to be asked.

Strong pluses

• Has shipped a consumer mobile app users actually came back to.
• Background in design, motion, or interaction craft strong enough that you could plausibly hold a design role.
• Experience with offline-first, real-time, or location-heavy products.
• Experience with voice, multimodal, or agent-driven interfaces.
• Comfortable participating in or leading qualitative user research.
• Experience at an early-stage startup where you wore many hats.
• Systems thinker. You build processes that scale. You document what you build.

Location and working model

Whym is a hybrid team based in the Bay Area, California and Bend, Oregon. We work together in person three days a week and reserve the other days for focused remote work. We prefer candidates who can work with us at our hubs, but will make room for exceptional candidates who want to be fully remote. Bend-based and remote teammates travel to the Bay Area regularly so the whole team can spend time together.

About Whym

Whym is an AI-powered app that helps people make time for what matters most. We suggest activities aligned with your values and help you coordinate plans with close friends. We are a two-person founding team with experience from Google, LinkedIn, Lyft, and earlier-stage startups. Whym is a Delaware C-Corp Public Benefit Corporation, pre-seed.