Looking for a new adventure? You've come to the right place.

We're an Amsterdam-based team of 40+ individuals with 15+ nationalities among us! A varied bunch of ‘citizens of the world’ with a range of cool skills and hundreds of thousands of kilometers under our travel belts. And we have something important in common (other than our very well-worn passports):

We want to change the way people travel.

And that's exactly what we're doing, with the travel app to plan, track, and relive trips in a smart and beautiful way.

Polarsteps has over 5 million users already, but for us, this is just the beginning. We have big plans for the future, and so we need even more talented and enthusiastic people to help us on our journey.

Want to know more about us? Here you go.

Your expedition: Android Development at Polarsteps

We’re a small team, doing big things.

If you haven't seen our app yet, go ahead and check it out, you'll see that we care (a lot) about providing a seamless, top-quality user experience for every one of our travelers. And it is this that has got us ratings of 4.8* and 4.7* on the app stores (where we’ve been featured multiple times). But it doesn’t stop there — not only did Google create this awesome video about us but we’ve been mentioned in two of Apple’s WWDC keynote speeches!

We’ve got an impressive past but we’re even more excited for the future — and the impact you can make from day one is huge, with everything you ship affecting more than 5 million users.

Even with that in mind, we believe in truly giving our team members the freedom they need to craft to perfection while encouraging a practical mindset to avoid under or over-engineering mishaps.

We are seeing an enthusiastic and accelerated recovery of the travel industry — and with that comes both opportunities and growing pains (especially in the complex, multi-layered travel domain). So, if on top of the challenges inherent to feature development, you enjoy thinking about the performance and scalability aspects of a platform, you're in for a lot of fun with us.

Your itinerary

What your journey at Polarsteps will look like day-to-day.

You will:

• Work closely with Rodrigo (Head of Engineering), Florian (Lead Android Engineer) and Amanshu (Senior Android Engineer) on all things related to our platform, the Android app, and our shared codebase written in Kotlin Multiplatform.
• Be responsible for implementing new features, improving existing features and maintaining the day-to-day operations of our Android App.
• Be part of a small, fast-moving team and have a lot of responsibility starting from day 1, with a lot of dynamicity in the scope and variety of your work.
• Take part in daily interactions with product owners, designers, other engineers, and the rest of our team — we believe in a deeply collaborative environment.
• Proactively improve the resiliency, maintainability and performance of our Android app — addressing technical debt when needed or, even better, preventing it when it makes sense.

The equipment in your backpack

What we’re hoping you’ll bring with you.

• A passion for problem-solving and programming. We believe that knowing your way around the specifics of certain APIs is only one part of the game. We have an interest in software engineering in general and often share approaches and ideas across teams. We value the lower-level understanding of certain ideas and principles more than a high-level understanding of any given framework that might be deprecated in the future.
• Familiarity with the trends in (mobile app) engineering. We are permanently reconsidering the choices we are making when it comes to technology. While being careful not to buy into every hype, we do pay attention to the evolution of our industry and try to cherry-pick the new approaches that would benefit our architecture and product at large.
• A sound knowledge of the native Android SDK (Kotlin/Java) and the accompanying AndroidX Jetpack libraries. We are using the default Android Studio Stack for development, Gradle as our build system and GitHub as repository + CI.
• A good understanding of mobile application/ platform architecture principles on and beyond the Android device. Our app is an offline-first + background-first application. Seeing and improving on how all parts connect and play together is an integral part of our daily work.
• An interest in UI/UX and everything related to the Android frontend. Our UI/UX is quite advanced and innovative, which usually requires going above and beyond what the Android SDK can provide.
• Experience working in an Agile team environment.

Bonus points for Experience with background location tracking, mobile maps (Mapbox), RXJava, Kotlin Multiplatform, OpenGL, Python, Docker

1st class extras

Some cool things to make the journey extra sweet.

• A yearly free flight or train ride to a random location! Give our Teleporter a spin here.
• A shiny new MacBook to work your magic on.
• Hybrid working. Split your time between the office and your home as you see fit.
• An extensive home office set-up — everything from noise-canceling headphones to a standing desk.
• 30 days of vacation (for adventures or sitting on the couch, it's up to you)
• Two paid Culture Days for days that are important to you but not recognized by the official Dutch calendar.-
• The option to switch up your zoom background by working from another country for up to 8 weeks a year.
• A personal development budget for that curious mind of yours!
• A pension plan to help you save for those around-the-world retirement trips.
• Delicious daily team lunches.
• Awesome monthly parties, as well as team trips away.
• A lively office in downtown Amsterdam, with travel costs reimbursed.
• Free Polarsteps Travel Books to contain all your far-flung adventures.

At Polarsteps, we believe the best products are built by people as diverse as the travelers using our apps! That's why we specifically encourage people underrepresented in the tech industry to apply for a role with us. Because we believe that diversity — be it age, race, sexual orientation, physical ability, ethnicity, or gender identity — makes both the world and the workplace better.

Think this is the path for you? Find out more about how we hire.