Android Systems Engineer (Android)

Location: Fully remote; preferably based on the African continent, with preference for Malawi, Sierra Leone, or Tanzania. Regional travel to field sites or manufacturers may be required at least once per year.

Salary: Competitive and commensurate with experience.

Company

hirify.global is a nonprofit education technology organization delivering scalable, evidence-based tablet learning solutions for literacy and numeracy through the onebillion application and supporting systems.

What you will do

• Design maintainable Android platform architectures across multiple tablet hardware variants.
• Modify, build, test, and document Android bootloaders, BSPs, kernels, device trees, vendor images, and system components.
• Assess hardware substitutions and collaborate with SoC vendors, manufacturers, Industrial Design Houses, and component suppliers.
• Contribute to Kotlin and Java applications and device-side tooling for diagnostics, provisioning, updates, storage, networking, and offline operation.
• Maintain ROM build, signing, release, factory flashing, provisioning, OTA update, rollback, and recovery processes.
• Diagnose and resolve issues across applications, system services, kernels, bootloaders, and device configurations while applying security patches and supporting on-call incidents.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in Android systems engineering, embedded Linux, firmware engineering, or related software engineering roles.
• Hands-on experience with Android BSPs, AOSP concepts, vendor Android builds, bootloaders, Linux kernel configuration, device trees, and Android system images.
• Experience with MediaTek/MTK platforms, early boot components, vendor BSPs, flashing tools, and production image workflows.
• Experience diagnosing hardware and software compatibility issues, including memory or other component substitutions.
• Experience developing Android applications or device-side tools in Kotlin and/or Java.
• Experience with secure boot, Android Verified Boot, signing, OTA updates, factory flashing, UART, adb, fastboot, crash logs, and kernel logs.

Nice to have

• Experience working with Chinese contract manufacturers, ODMs, or Industrial Design Houses.
• Experience supporting Android devices at scale in low-connectivity or field environments.
• Experience with kiosk mode, mobile device management, provisioning, offline-first applications, or education technology deployments.
• Knowledge of OpenWRT or other embedded Linux platforms.
• Mandarin language skills.

Culture & Benefits

• Work with a collaborative, mission-driven team focused on improving access to foundational literacy and numeracy.
• Fully remote work with a preference for candidates based in Africa.
• Opportunity to support deployments across Malawi, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and other African countries.
• Regional travel to field sites or manufacturers may be required at least annually.
• Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.