Principal Engineer, Mobile

ABOUT SLATE At Slate, we’re building safe, reliable vehicles that people can afford, personalize and love—and doing it here in the USA as part of our commitment to reindustrialization. The spirit of DIY and customization runs throughout every element of a Slate, because people should have control over how their trucks look, feel, and represent them. This is the senior-most individual contributor on the mobile team — the person who shapes architecture, sets the engineering quality bar, and personally closes the hardest technical gaps standing between our current build and a November GA launch. The Slate mobile app covers a wide technical surface: a React Native / TypeScript product layer, a custom native module for vehicle communication, a dedicated mobile backend-for-frontend, platform-level security and encryption, and integrations spanning EV charging, service scheduling, account management, and over-the-air update delivery. You need to be equally comfortable driving complex product features in React Native and reasoning through low-level native module behavior, and you should be able to step into backend service work when mobile product needs require it. What You Get to Do Vehicle Communication and Native Module Engineering Serve as the architectural owner of the C++ Turbo Module that bridges the React Native JS layer to the vehicle Secure Gateway Module over USB/DTLS — setting direction, leading design decisions, and being the escalation point for the hardest debugging and performance issues in the native layer. Own the TypeScript/C++ boundary defined by the TurboModule Codegen spec — vehicle data polling, UDS diagnostic requests, CAN bus messaging, OTA update management, DTC operations, and security access — and ensure the team is building to that contract correctly. review and approve significant changes to the vehicle communication data model. Drive the DTLS session lifecycle architecture: certificate issuance, BFF-mediated vehicle security endpoints, and cryptographic operations within the native layer. Lead the evaluation and outcome decision on protobuf-based dynamic DID mapping to align vehicle communication with the source-of-truth data model. serve as the technical bar for what constitutes a well-tested, merge-ready change in the native communication layer. Mobile Application Architecture and Product Features Own the overall layered application architecture — from Presentation through Native Modules and Data Persistence — making binding calls on structure, patterns, and technology decisions as the app scales toward GA and beyond. Drive architecture and implementation across active epics: jump into hands-on implementation where the team needs technical leadership or the problem requires it. Set the standard for server state management patterns across the app — caching, synchronization, optimistic updates, and stale-while-revalidate behavior — and ensure consistent application across charging, vehicle data, and scheduling endpoints. Own the encrypted local storage architecture and its per-VIN partitioning scheme; Lead warm-start lifecycle hygiene: diagnose and resolve lifecycle risks across screens and establish preventative patterns the team applies going forward. Provide architectural direction on embedded WebView integrations — Account Management, Finance, E-Commerce — including secure session-token passing and native-to-web message bridge contracts. Own the push notification architecture end-to-end: backend integration approach, client-side token management and permission flow, deep-link routing strategy, and encryption requirements. Backend-for-Frontend and Service Integration Provide technical direction on the mobile BFF — jump in to extend or debug service endpoints for charging, service scheduling, vehicle security, and auth flows when mobile product needs it. JWT refresh strategy, API key gating, and version-safe endpoint evolution that accommodates multiple installed app versions in the wild. Drive charging API ownership resolution and close any gap between mobile BFF needs and backend service contracts. Provide technical oversight on RepairPal BFF integration, ensuring the service scheduling flow is robust to backend latency, partial failures, and slot availability edge cases. Observability, Quality, and Reliability Set the observability strategy for the mobile app: Datadog RUM configuration, structured logging architecture, and production crash reporting standards. Lead performance profiling efforts using Datadog RUM: identify root causes of long JS tasks exceeding the 100ms threshold, set response time targets for user-initiated vehicle interactions, and drive the team toward those benchmarks. Build, Release, and OTA Infrastructure Own the overall build and release architecture for iOS and Android: EAS Build pipeline, provisioning lifecycle, distribution strategy, and production submission process. Set the OTA update delivery strategy: define update channels, rollout policies, and ro