At Panera Bread, you will lead the engineering teams behind one of the most widely used mobile experiences in the restaurant industry, across a digital commerce portfolio backed by a large physical restaurant footprint. The problems are complex and highly visible, and the organization is built so every engineer sees the impact of their work.

This is an Android-first leadership role and requires strong, hands-on Android native experience. You will lead the Android team from day one setting technical direction, raising engineering standards, and owning delivery. Within your first 3–6 months, you will expand to manage and own delivery for the iOS and React Native teams as well, growing into full ownership of mobile engineering as both people leader and technical leader. You will partner with our Mobile Principal Architect on architecture decisions and platform strategy.

You will represent mobile in highly technical forums, translate product requirements into clear technical direction, and work with third party partners from enterprise vendors to emerging providers, alongside a first class team of engineers, product managers, and designers building features guests notice and that move the business.

Location: St. Louis, MO (hybrid)

The primary responsibilities of this job include, but are not limited to:

• Role Scope & Accountability
  • Accountable for the performance, delivery, and technical health of the Android engineering team, expanding to own the iOS and React Native teams within the first 3–6 months
  • Operates with broad autonomy within defined product and platform strategy
  • Translates organizational goals into team-level execution plans and measurable outcomes
  • Acts as a people leader first, while remaining deeply fluent in mobile engineering practices, with a strong Android foundation
  • Owns the delivery and stability of mobile code in production, including release quality, performance, and platform reliability
  • Owns and evolves the mobile technical roadmap, balancing feature delivery with technical investment and platform health

• Core Responsibilities
  • People Leadership & Team Development
    • Owns the overall effectiveness, engagement, delivery, and growth of the Android engineering team, extending to the iOS and React Native teams as ownership transitions in
    • Leads and develops engineers across varying experience levels, including senior ICs
    • Sets clear expectations for performance, behaviors, and engineering standards
    • Owns hiring outcomes, including pipeline strategy, interview design, and final talent recommendations
    • Accountable for onboarding, coaching, performance feedback, and career progression
  • Technical Ownership & Direction
    • Provides technical direction and architectural guidance for Android applications, extending across iOS and React Native as scope grows
    • Facilitates and guides technical design discussions, trade-off analyses, and solution decisions
    • Ensures consistent adoption of mobile engineering best practices, architecture patterns, and coding standards
    • Partners with enterprise and platform architects to ensure mobile solutions align with broader system strategy
    • Evaluates new tools, frameworks, and technologies and determines practical adoption paths for the team
    • Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot) to improve engineering productivity
    • Experience integrating LLMs or AI APIs (e.g., Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT) into application features or workflows
  • Delivery & Execution Management
    • Accountable for predictable, high-quality delivery of Android initiatives, expanding to iOS and React Native as those teams transition in
    • Partners with Product and Design leaders to translate business objectives into executable feature plans
    • Manages scope, sequencing, and dependencies; proposes MVP or phased approaches to maximize value delivery
    • Balances feature development with technical investment and platform stability
    • Escalates delivery risks, trade-offs, and timeline impacts with clarity and data

• Required Qualifications
  • 10+ years of professional mobile development experience with strong, hands-on Android native experience, and increasing leadership responsibility
  • Ready to take on management, ownership, and delivery for the iOS and React Native teams within the first 3–6 months, in addition to leading Android
  • Proven experience leading engineering teams and owning delivery outcomes
  • Strong foundation in scalable, maintainable software design and architecture
  • Deep proficiency in Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Android SDKs, Git, and Android build tooling
  • Working knowledge of Java and XML layouts to support and maintain legacy code
  • Hands-on experience with modern Android architecture patterns (MVVM/MVP) and threading models
  • Experience working within Agile/Scrum delivery models and tooling (e.g., Jira)
  • Demonstrated ability to collaborate across product, design, and platform teams
  • Experience building or maintaining ADA-compliant Android applications
  • Familiarity with app store release management and phased rollouts at scale
  • Experience establishing testing and quality standards, including automated unit and UI test coverage and code review practices
  • Experience owning production support for consumer mobile apps, including crash reporting, performance monitoring, and incident response (Crashlytics, Datadog, New Relic, or equivalent)
  • Familiarity with mobile security and compliance practices, including secure token handling, payment data considerations, and app store privacy requirements
  • Strong experience integrating REST APIs and partnering with backend, middleware, and platform teams
• Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience with iOS (Swift/SwiftUI) and/or cross-platform frameworks such as React Native, in addition to Android
  • Experience with automated testing strategies
  • Experience with dependency injection frameworks and background services
  • Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines for mobile (e.g., Fastlane, Bitrise, GitHub Actions)
  • Experience with app performance monitoring and crash reporting tools (e.g., Firebase Crashlytics, Datadog)
• Leadership Characteristics
  • Demonstrates a strong sense of ownership and accountability
  • Balances technical judgment with people leadership
  • Proactively identifies opportunities for continuous improvement
  • Comfortable operating in a fast-paced, high-visibility environment
  • Trusted partner to Product and Business stakeholder

The actual pay offered will be determined by multiple factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s relevant experience, job-related knowledge, skills, and geographical location. Individual compensation decisions are dependent upon the facts and circumstances of each position and candidate.