Principal iOS Engineer

Job description

About us

Aave Labs began with a simple question: how do we make financial services like borrowing, saving, and earning more accessible globally?

We built the Aave Protocol, now the world’s largest and most trusted onchain lending market, connecting decentralized finance with individuals, traditional finance, and fintech.

Today, we build trusted, high-quality products that expand access to lending, credit, and savings globally

Our culture

We build trusted products that help people access and discover economic opportunities.

We hold a high bar for quality and craftsmanship. No detail is too small. Trust depends on it.

We’re a global team building products people can actually use, turning complex technology into something simple and reliable.

We stay aligned, move quickly, and think long term, while keeping teams lean and focused on impact.

About the Role

We're looking for a Principal iOS Engineer to lead the iOS engineering team and shape the architecture of Aave App. You'll combine hands-on technical depth with day-to-day team leadership to deliver a secure, intuitive consumer savings experience built on blockchain infrastructure.

This role owns the technical direction for iOS, from application architecture and engineering standards to wallet security, transaction flows, performance, and release quality. You'll turn product goals into a clear roadmap, guide engineers through complex decisions, and partner closely with design, product, backend, protocol, and security teams.

Production experience integrating blockchain functionality into an iOS application is essential for this role. The successful candidate will be able to lead decisions around wallets, private keys, transaction signing, RPC interaction, and onchain state.

How you can make an impact: - Own and evolve the technical architecture of Aave App on iOS, setting direction that supports rapid product development without compromising security or maintainability - Design and ship core blockchain functionality, including wallet creation and connectivity, key management, transaction construction and signing, gas estimation, RPC interaction, onchain reads, and account-abstraction flows - Lead the integration of onchain and offchain data across savings, funding, withdrawal, bridge, vault, portfolio, notification, and analytics experiences. - Set standards for application architecture, Swift and UIKit code quality, testing, observability, performance, release safety, and incident response - Remain hands-on in the codebase, particularly for foundational architecture, security-sensitive functionality, complex integrations, and critical production issues - Partner closely with design to deliver precise UI, refined interactions, accessibility, and a cohesive mobile design system - Coach and mentor iOS engineers, delegate meaningful ownership, provide clear technical and performance feedback, and contribute to hiring and team development

Let's connect if you have: - 8+ years building production iOS applications, including experience operating at Principal, Lead, or equivalent level - Deep Swift and UIKit expertise, with a strong understanding of iOS architecture, concurrency, networking, navigation, application lifecycle, and native frameworks - Hands-on production experience integrating blockchain functionality into an iOS application, including wallets, private keys, transaction signing, RPCs, gas, and onchain transaction lifecycles - A track record of setting architectural direction for a complex consumer application  - Experience leading engineers through ambiguous, high-impact work, raising quality through mentoring and review, and creating clear ownership across a team. - Strong judgement around performance, testing strategy, observability, release safety, incident response, and production reliability - Proven ability to deliver polished, design-precise consumer experiences and collaborate effectively across product, design, backend, protocol, and security teams - Clear communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders, particularly when explaining architecture, risk, priorities, and trade-offs

Haven’t quite met all the criteria? Let’s not miss out on the chance to speak. Whilst you might not meet every single requirement, you might bring other, more exciting skills to the companies!

Equal opportunities statement:

Aave Labs celebrates diversity and views each and every team member as a separate individual with their own unique identity. No matter your race, religion, gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation or even the wallet you use, we welcome you at Aave Labs. As an equal opportunities employer, we take accountability and believe in everyone's potential to build, create and inspire changes. With a mission to build a diverse workforce, we are proud to foster a working environment in which everyone can feel safe and valued for who they are.