Who We Are

Hummingbirds is a creator platform purpose-built for brands that need real content, from real people, in the cities where they’re in retailers.

We activate everyday creators—our “hummingbirds”—to generate authentic, localized user-generated content (UGC) that supports retailer visibility, drives social proof, and helps brand teams do more without adding to their plate. Our platform replaces high-cost influencer models with a scalable, turnkey solution for activating shoppers and collecting usable content across key markets.

What We’re Doing

Our mission is to connect people to brands that make their lives better. We aim to be the go-to platform that empowers community-driven commerce, fostering authentic relationships between brands and local creators to inspire action and create lasting value. Through this approach, we help brands and communities to thrive together.

How We’re Growing

Kicking off 2025, we’ve generated millions of dollars in revenue, connected tens of thousands of creators with brands, and fostered authentic connections between those brands and local consumers who are excited to share, and support the brands they love!

Most importantly, we’ve helped democratize influence – people crave real recommendations from their friends. While influencers are amazing, we believe there’s also space for everyday people to share their favorite brands and secure collaborations, even without six-figure follower counts. At the heart of it all is our commitment to building stronger, more connected local communities, where everyone has a voice and a chance to make an impact.

Our Engineering Team Composition

Our engineering team is small but mighty — five talented engineers working alongside two product designers and a product lead to bring bold ideas to life. We're building with intention: fast, collaborative, and increasingly AI-native.

We operate lean, iterate quickly, and prioritize high-leverage solutions. While our HQ is in Des Moines, IA, the team is remote-first and distributed across Central and Eastern time zones. We stay tightly connected through clear priorities, async-friendly workflows, and a shared focus on delivering real impact. Whether it’s improving campaign automation, designing delightful creator experiences, or architecting scalable systems, this team is laying the groundwork for what it means to build the future of people-powered growth.

We’re hiring a Mobile Software Engineer to own core pieces of our iOS/Android app and help build the first generation of our mobile experience.

Why this role matters

As an early mobile hire, you’ll shape the architecture, product quality, and velocity of our apps. You’ll weave AI and automation into real user workflows—from smarter onboarding and creator matching to intelligent content capture and reporting. Your impact will stretch beyond code into product decisions, tooling, and the way we scale on mobile.

What you’ll work on

• Ship core app features that feel intuitive, fast, and reliable for creators
• Own the mobile stack (React Native or native Swift/Kotlin) including navigation, state management, offline-first data sync, and performance.
• Media & device integrations: gallery permissions, editing/trim, background uploads, push notifications, deep links, share sheets.
• Location & retail context: geofencing, in-store validations, maps, background location with privacy-first design.
• Quality & reliability: implement unit/integ/e2e tests (XCTest/Espresso/Detox/Jest), crash analytics (Crashlytics/Sentry), remote config/feature flags.
• App delivery: build CI/CD with Fastlane/Gradle, manage signing, beta distribution (TestFlight/Play Console), and smooth App Store/Play submissions.
• AI in practice: integrate LLM/ML services for smarter prompts, moderation, content guidance, and agent-like automations.
• Cross-functional partner: work closely with Product, Design, and GTM to clarify problems, instrument analytics, and iterate quickly with real user feedback.
• Internal tooling: build lightweight mobile dev tooling and diagnostics to reduce repetitive work and accelerate feature delivery.

You’ll thrive here if you…

• Care deeply about user experience and sweat details on mobile interactions, animations, and polish.
• Treat AI as a lever, not a buzzword—using it to remove friction and supercharge creation/collaboration.
• Bias to action and learning; you ship iteratively, measure impact, and make it better the next day.
• Take ownership from problem to release to follow-through.
• Communicate clearly, give/receive crisp feedback, and enjoy collaborating.

Must-haves

• 5+ years building production mobile apps (React Native or native iOS/Android), with at least one app shipped and maintained at scale.
• Strong JS/TS fundamentals (for RN) or strong Swift/Kotlin fundamentals (for native), plus comfort bridging native modules if RN.
• Experience with mobile architecture patterns (MVVM, Redux/Zustand/Recoil, Clean Architecture) and offline-first sync.
• Deep familiarity with mobile performance (startup time, bundle size, memory), accessibility, and secure data handling.
• Experience integrating REST/GraphQL APIs, auth (OAuth/JWT), and analytics/experimentation (Amplitude/Mixpanel/GA4, feature flags).
• Solid testing approach across unit/integration/E2E and experience with Crashlytics/Sentry.
• CI/CD experience (Fastlane, Gradle, Xcode Cloud/GitHub Actions) and app store submission processes.

AI-Forward Must-haves

• Hands-on experience using AI coding assistants (Claude, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, etc.) in day-to-day development — not just as helpers, but to accelerate delivery, reduce boilerplate, and co-create production-ready code.
• Experience integrating AI/ML capabilities into mobile apps (e.g., on-device MLKit/CoreML, embeddings, semantic search, personalization engines, or AI-driven UI/UX features).
• Familiarity with AI-native workflows such as prompt engineering for mobile contexts, agentic task orchestration, or fine-tuning/using LLM APIs inside mobile experiences.
• Strong ability to evaluate trade-offs of local vs. cloud inference, latency vs. accuracy, and cost vs. experience in shipping AI-enhanced mobile features at scale.

Nice-to-haves

• Media pipelines (camera, video/image compression, background uploads, AVFoundation/CameraX).
• Location/Maps (MapKit/Google Maps, geofencing, background location, on-device privacy).
• On-device ML (Core ML, TensorFlow Lite) or LLM integrations; prompt/response UX.
• Background tasks/WorkManager, push notifications (FCM/APNs), deep links, App Clips/Instant Apps.
• AWS/Firebase (Cognito, AppSync/GraphQL, S3, CloudFront) or equivalent cloud experience.
• Marketplace or two-sided platform experience.

Our Hiring and Team Mindset

The right person for this position can be based anywhere in the U.S.  We’re a remote-first company that is clustered in the Midwest, but we want to work with great folks wherever they are.

Benefits:

• Healthcare
• Self-managed paid time off
• Employee stock options
• Compensation range between $110k-$170k depending on experience and skills

All interviews are being held remotely. If there are preparations we can make to help ensure you have a comfortable and positive interview experience, please let us know.

Please send relevant information and resume to nick@hummingbirds.com.