About this role
More than 3 billion people in over 180 countries use WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends and family, anytime and anywhere. In India, it is also where a great deal of everyday life gets done — people message businesses, coordinate their families, and increasingly send money as easily as they send a message.
We are building a new team to take WhatsApp further in that direction. The newly established WhatsApp Services team is focused on making WhatsApp more useful for more of what people already use it for, and on building what comes next.
The WhatsApp Services team is treated as a zero-to-one effort so we can move fast, take risks and build as we go — staffed and prioritized, like every other WhatsApp team, from day one. Payments on WhatsApp aren't a bet on paper: live and growing in India, with the existing WhatsApp payments engineering team moving across as the foundation.
As an Android engineer at WhatsApp you will use your start-up mindset and your full range of engineering skills to produce elegantly simple products. You'll be expected to push the boundaries of what's possible in a mobile app, while sharing our commitment to quality and attention to detail. You will set direction for a team's technical area, lead major initiatives end to end, and be one of the people the pillar relies on to make the right engineering trade-offs under real ambiguity.
Responsibilities
Build and ship client features for WhatsApp on Android, with a focus on performance, reliability and memory footprint on the low- and mid-tier devices that dominate the market.
Own Android client architecture for services surfaces — payments, commerce and the everyday money-centric flows people already come to WhatsApp for.
Work across Kotlin and Java with the Android SDK, and partner with server and platform teams on API design.
Set direction and goals for a team, lead major initiatives and drive them to completion across functions.
Architect efficient and scalable systems that drive complex applications, and make the engineering trade-offs a 0-to-1 effort demands.
Identify and resolve performance and scalability issues, and drive large efforts to reduce technical debt.
Establish ownership of significant components, features or systems with expert end-to-end understanding.
Provide technical guidance and mentorship to peers, help onboard new team members and raise the engineering bar in the team.
Collaborate with cross-functional teams in product management, design, data science and operations to build innovative application experiences.
Partner with payments, legal, compliance and local operations partners to ship services that meet the reliability and regulatory bar expected in India.
Qualifications
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, relevant technical field, or equivalent practical experience
8+ years of programming experience in a relevant language, or 4+ years of experience with a PhD
Demonstrated experience driving change within an organization and leading complex technical projects
Experience utilizing data and analysis to explain technical problems and provide detailed feedback and solutions Experience building Android applications in Java or Kotlin using the Android SDK
Experience with multithreading programming and mobile memory management
Experience optimising for low-end devices, constrained networks and app size
Experience building for the Indian market, including familiarity with UPI and India's digital payments ecosystem
In-market experience in India, or experience at an India-based consumer technology or fintech company operating at scale
Experience building payment systems at scale, including the reliability, correctness and regulatory requirements they carry
Background in monetization, payments, commerce or AI/ML products
Experience building 0-to-1 products or standing up new product areas
Experience with global, multi-market products, particularly in emerging markets
Experience working with teams distributed across multiple sites
Familiarity with messaging platforms or mobile-first consumer products
Demonstrated ability to integrate AI tools to optimize/redesign workflows and drive measurable impact (e.g., efficiency gains, quality improvements)
Experience adhering to and implementing responsible, ethical AI practices (e.g., risk assessment, bias mitigation, quality and accuracy reviews)
Demonstrated ongoing AI skill development (e.g., prompt/context engineering, agent orchestration) and staying current with emerging AI technologies