#WorkItWednesday featuring Daniel Kim, Senior Android Engineer

Welcome to #WorkItWednesday, Grindr's feature on employees and programs at the heart of the work we do to connect the global queer community.

Meet Daniel Kim (he/him), Senior Android Engineer at Grindr!

Daniel Graduated from Cal State Long Beach where he studied Computer Science. Prior to Grindr, Daniel held several positions where he got to work on projects including anomaly detection for a satellite system and the development of an NLP (Natural Language Processing) system. After wrapping those up, Daniel found himself on Grindr’s Android team and hasn't looked back. He joined Grindr in May 2021 and has loved working with a team of innovative engineers on impactful projects.

Check out Daniel’s Grindr story below, and take a look at our careers page to learn more about our open job opportunities.

What drew you to Android engineering specifically?

Android engineering is very fast-paced. It can be daunting how fast things change in the industry. But the complexities of mobile devices, coupled with the pace of change is exactly the reason that I love it. It keeps me on my toes and is really exciting. With coding languages and industry standards changing, keeping up with the evolution of the field allows me to constantly learn. For instance, a lot of legacy Android code is in Java but Kotlin is a new and much more sophisticated coding language that helps to push out features faster and creates a more reliable app for the user. Having to switch gears and learn a new coding language here at Grindr has helped me become a better developer.

Have you always worked in the software industry?

I have worked in a broad set of industries prior to joining Grindr. I have been a part of academia, FinTech, and different start-ups. While I have always worked in coding, I have always been more drawn to the technical pieces of a role rather than the industry. Working for Grindr was exciting because I got to work on interesting tech projects such as the migration from MVC to MVVM + CLEAN to clean up the architecture of the app. This made it so that we could write better and more stable code.

Tell us why you joined Grindr. What do you love most about our mission and our culture?

I was looking for a company that gave me the opportunity and autonomy to work on technical projects that I was passionate about. A lot of companies are so “feature-focused” that they set their engineers to work on that and only that. Grindr has the perfect balance of working on rolling out features and exploring new ways to make the app better for users. The company really values the quality of the work over the speed.

I really feel valued working at Grindr. People care about you and you are more than just your job. It feels wonderful to work on a team of invested coworkers where we all believe in the mission of the company of supporting the LGBTQ+ community in connecting worldwide.

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What is the most interesting thing about working for Grindr?

I keep going back to having the space to work on the things that I want to work on. Autonomy is not only allowed, but encouraged. That creates a much different environment from my previous roles. It also makes me feel like the team is moving the app forward when we get the freedom to be creative. One interesting thing I have been working on is refactoring the code to ultimately allow us to focus more on our user base and launch new and exciting features faster!

How have you grown professionally while on our team?

I have such a great team and manager to lean on for support at Grindr. My manager has really gone above and beyond to help me develop not only my technical skills but also my interpersonal skills. I can tend to be a little more reserved, but he has created a space where the team feels comfortable speaking up and voicing their opinions. He also encourages me to go outside of my comfort zone to learn and grow. I have recently started sitting in on interviews for the team and it has been great to contribute to that work, too.

I have always been interested in learning more about mobile application security. Grindr actually has a security champions program that brings together people from different engineering functions of the company to address security on the app. I have been able to work on security projects which has not only helped me develop a broader understanding of mobile security but also dive into an area that I was really interested in.

What interesting problems is your Grindr team solving for and what are you looking forward to for the future?

Recently I have been partnering with the growth team on some new projects geared towards that. This is my first time working on growth-focused projects and it's really interesting to think through the ways that we engage users with the app and implement new offerings to deliver more value for them.

We’ve also been upgrading the testing pipeline by shifting our Bitrise workflows, emphasizing better instrumentation, and unit testing and moving our UI test to Firebase Test Labs. This allows us to build faster features and reduce bugs and crashes, all while providing a better and even more secure experience for our users.

And this is just the beginning – our roadmap for upcoming features and user experience is so exciting and I’m really happy to be part of it.

If you are interested in working with talented engineers like Daniel at a company where you can see immediate impact on not only the work, but for the LGBTQ+ community, you should apply today!