Senior iOS Engineer

A FaceTime call cuts into bath time. When it ends, the lesson picks up on the very same word. Build that for iPhone and iPad.

Tatako is hiring its first Senior iOS Engineer to bring the lessons to iPhone and iPad and take the app through its App Store launch. The architecture, the audio, the octopus on screen and the way the app earns its place in the Kids Category are yours to build.

About Tatako

Tatako makes short spoken English lessons for little ones. A lesson takes about five minutes, there is nothing to read, and a small round octopus keeps everyone company. He has eight arms, no socks, and usually loses count at seven.

Spanish stays the language of home, and Tatako adds a little English on top. An optional Spanish guide voice explains what to do and switches off anytime. Every lesson has three small steps: Hear it, say it. Touch it. Name it. In the last step the picture comes back without the word, and the child names it first.

The course has 369 first words and phrases, from “hello” and “mommy” to colors, animals and what the teacher says at preschool. Tatako works in the browser on any phone or tablet, and we start with Spanish-speaking families across the United States.

The role

• Remote and full-time, open to candidates who live in Florida, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee or Arizona
• Fluent English
• You report directly to the founders

By day 90, the iPhone and iPad app plays every lesson end to end in TestFlight, progress matches the web on every device, and the App Store submission is ready for review.

What you will do

• Own the audio of Hear it, say it: AVAudioEngine timing for each word’s three plays and pauses, an audio session made for spoken lessons, and calls, Siri and AirPods handled without losing the place.
• Get Touch it right on every screen: hit areas sized for small fingers, layouts that hold from the smallest iPhone to an iPad in Split View, and lessons that run well under Guided Access.
• Put the octopus on iPhone and iPad with the Rive iOS runtime: the same file as the web, driven by the lesson’s three steps through data binding, paused off screen and smooth on the oldest devices we support.
• Carry each child’s progress across devices: Sign in with Google through Google’s iOS SDK, set up to pass App Review’s login rules, and the grown-up’s marks saved on the device at once, then synced with the web.
• Take the app into the Kids Category: a parental gate before any link out of the app, no ad SDKs or third-party analytics near the lessons, an accurate privacy manifest and privacy labels that match the code.
• Keep it light on older iPhones and iPads: launch time, memory and dropped frames measured on real devices, lesson media prefetched in the background, and a download that stays small.
• Set up the codebase and the release train: small modules that build and test on their own, UI tests on the lesson flow, CI on Apple Silicon and a TestFlight build on every merge.

What you bring

• 5+ years building iOS apps in Swift, including one you took from an empty Xcode project to the App Store.
• SwiftUI with UIKit where it counts, MVVM, Swift Package Manager modules and Swift concurrency without data races.
• AVFoundation in depth: audio sessions, interruptions, route changes and precise playback timing.
• Performance work in Instruments, from Time Profiler to Allocations and Hangs, on real older devices.
• Release craft: XCTest and XCUITest, CI with GitHub Actions or Jenkins, TestFlight and a calm hand with App Review.
• You know what COPPA, the Kids Category and App Store privacy labels ask of an app, and your code keeps every promise.

Bonus points

• You have shipped an app in the App Store’s Kids Category.
• You have used the Rive iOS runtime in production, or built character animation with Core Animation.

Why you will love it

• You take Tatako from “Coming soon” to live in the App Store.
• The app’s architecture, tooling and release bar start with you.
• Your craft shows in small moments: a lesson in the car, the octopus waving at bath time.

How to apply

Meet the octopus at tatako.com, then email [email protected] with your LinkedIn profile or portfolio. Make sure it shows an iOS app you built and shipped to the App Store.

Apply by email

If your experience matches the role, our team will get in touch to discuss next steps.