Building the Future of Open Finance
Payward - the parent company behind Kraken, NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, Payward Services and CF Benchmarks - has spent the last 15 years building one of the most modern and globally accessible financial infrastructure platforms in the industry, built to advance an open, global financial system.
Before you apply, we encourage you to explore our culture page to understand what drives us and how we work.
The team
Founded in 2011, Kraken is one of the world's longest-standing crypto platforms, trusted by over 10 million individuals and institutions across the globe. It offers spot trading, margin, futures, staking, and OTC services, with products built for both individual investors and institutional clients.
The Consumer Mobile team builds the Kraken app — the interface millions of people use to interact with their money. We work in React Native and care deeply about how the product feels, not just whether it functions. A trade confirmation should feel instantaneous. A portfolio should feel alive. Navigation should feel effortless. These details directly impact trust, and trust is everything in crypto.
The opportunity
Most mobile engineers can build screens. This role is for someone who makes interfaces feel right — the weight of a gesture, the timing of a transition, the moment a loading state becomes invisible. You obsess over these details not because a designer asked for them, but because you can't ship something that feels wrong.
Own the craft layer of our React Native mobile experience — fluid, gesture-driven interactions and transitions that feel native, not web-in-a-wrapper
Push React Native beyond its defaults — Reanimated, Skia, native module bridges when the abstraction isn't enough
Partner closely with product designers, challenging and elevating motion and interaction design from concept through implementation
Establish animation primitives and interaction patterns within our design system that other engineers build on — your work becomes the quality floor for the team
Profile and optimise rendering performance, especially on lower-end Android devices where frame drops are unforgivable
Contribute to architectural decisions that affect UI responsiveness: state management, render cycles, and data flow into the view layer
Mentor engineers on interaction quality and raise the standard for what "done" looks like across the mobile org
What you bring
Deep, demonstrable experience building polished mobile interfaces in React Native — you know Reanimated well, you've fought with gesture handlers, and you've profiled JS thread vs UI thread performance and won
A trained eye for interaction design — you notice when an easing curve is wrong, you have opinions about spring physics, and you understand that 60fps isn't a target, it's a constraint
A portfolio or demo reel of shipped work is a hard requirement — a personal site, video walkthrough, GitHub interaction demos, or screen captures of work you're proud of. If we can't see your craft, we can't evaluate it
Experience with modern AI development tooling (Cursor, Copilot, or similar) as a natural part of how you build — not as a novelty, but as a multiplier
Strong written and verbal communication skills in English
Nice to haves
Experience with React Native Skia, custom shader work, or canvas-based rendering for non-standard UI
Some native platform knowledge (Swift/Kotlin) for when you need to drop below the RN abstraction — bridging, native modules, platform-specific behaviour
You've built interaction patterns that other engineers adopted — shared animation libraries, gesture primitives, motion design systems
Background in or affinity for visual/motion design — maybe you prototype in Figma or After Effects before you write code, maybe you sketch interaction flows on paper. Either way, you think visually
Unless a specific application deadline is stated in the job posting, applications are accepted on an ongoing basis.
Please note, applicants are permitted to redact or remove information on their resume that identifies age, date of birth, or dates of attendance at or graduation from an educational institution.
We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment on our team, assessing candidates in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.
Payward is powered by people from around the world and we celebrate the diverse talents, backgrounds, contributions, and unique perspectives that everyone brings to the table. We hire based on merit, seeking out people with the right abilities, knowledge, and skills for the job. We encourage you to apply for roles where you don't fully meet the listed requirements, especially if you're passionate or knowledgeable about crypto.
We may ask candidates to complete job-related skills or work-style assessments as part of our hiring process. These assessments evaluate competencies relevant to the role and are applied consistently across candidates for similar positions. Results are considered alongside experience and interviews, and are not the sole basis for any employment decision.
As an equal opportunity employer, we don't tolerate discrimination or harassment of any kind, whether based on race, ethnicity, age, gender identity, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.
Stay in the know
