Building a Social Media app

Senior React Native Engineer — Take Over & Launch a Consumer Social App We're looking for a senior React Native engineer to take ownership of an existing, fully-built consumer social media app and get it to App Store launch quality. The app already works. A previous developer built it end to end, and we have a complete, functioning codebase. What we need now is an experienced engineer to take the wheel, harden it, and ship it: tighten the design, fix the speed, clean up the backend, eliminate bugs, and make every feature work exactly as intended. This is a polish-and-launch role, not a build-from-scratch role, so we want someone genuinely strong at improving an existing codebase rather than rewriting it. This is a video-first social product — an infinite media feed, video upload and playback, user profiles, direct messaging, notifications, and engagement/retention mechanics. Think of the surface area of a modern social app, and our bar is that it should feel as smooth and fast as the top social apps on the store. Right now it's close, and we need someone to take it the last mile. What you'll own Performance & smoothness — profile and fix slow screens, janky scrolling, slow cold starts, memory issues, and re-render problems. Feed and video playback in particular must be flawless. Design polish — tighten spacing, animations, transitions, and component consistency so the UI looks and feels professionally finished. Backend cleanup — review and improve the backend: data models, queries, API/edge functions, security rules, storage, and the media pipeline. Efficient, reliable, and ready for real users. Bug elimination — hunt down and fix every bug; deliver a stable, well-tested app. Feature completeness — make sure all existing features work as envisioned, end to end, with proper edge-case and error handling. App Store launch — get it through Apple App Store review: build config, signing, App Store Connect, privacy/permissions, store technical requirements. (Android is a likely follow-on.) The stack you'll be working in Frontend: Expo + React Native + TypeScript, Expo Router (Reanimated and EAS Build/Submit a plus) Backend: a managed cloud backend with Postgres, authentication, file/object storage, realtime subscriptions, and row-level security (BaaS-style; comfortable with SQL, policies, and serverless/edge functions) Video: a managed video pipeline for direct uploads, transcoding, and adaptive HLS streaming, plus object storage and CDN delivery Notifications: push notifications (OneSignal or similar) Payments: Stripe integration experience is a plus Native device APIs: comfort with camera, media library, background tasks, location, and notifications; able to write/maintain native modules when needed Tooling: Git, EAS, environment management, basic CI/CD, crash/error monitoring (e.g., Sentry) Must-haves 4+ years building production React Native apps, with shipped App Store apps you can show us Deep, demonstrable experience profiling and optimizing React Native performance (list/image/video tuning, memoization, startup and bundle optimization) Strong with a Postgres / BaaS-style backend (schema design, SQL, security rules, serverless functions) Real experience with video upload and playback Have taken an app through Apple App Store review to a live release Excellent written English, proactive communication, and comfort owning a codebase someone else wrote Nice-to-haves Realtime/social feed and messaging at scale, Reanimated/gesture-heavy UI, Stripe or marketplace payment flows, crash analytics and feature flags, and prior experience launching a consumer/social app. How we work Small, fast-moving founding team with direct access to the founder and quick decisions. We'll start with a short paid trial task so we can both confirm fit before committing to ongoing work; strong performers move into an ongoing, long-term engagement. Some overlap with US Central time is required. An NDA is required before code access. To apply, please include: Links to 1–3 App Store apps you've built and your exact role on each A time you made an existing React Native app dramatically faster or smoother — what was slow, what you did, and the measured result Your experience with video upload/playback and with a Postgres/BaaS backend Your weekly availability and your US-Central overlap Start your reply with the word "SMOOTH" so we know you read this. Generic proposals will be ignored.