Dedicated Android engineers, vetted
Hire Android engineers who ship stable apps across every device
Grape5 places dedicated, pre-vetted Android engineers with US companies building or maintaining native Android apps. They work in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, plus legacy Java and XML when your codebase needs it, managing lifecycle, concurrency, and device fragmentation, and shipping to the Play Store. India-based, with at least four hours of daily US overlap.
In short
Grape5 places dedicated, pre-vetted Android engineers with US companies building or maintaining native Android apps.
They work in Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, plus legacy Java and XML when your codebase needs it, managing lifecycle, concurrency, and device fragmentation, and shipping to the Play Store. India-based, with at least four hours of daily US overlap.
When to hire Android developers
- You are migrating a legacy Java and XML view app to Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, and you need it done screen by screen without freezing your roadmap or breaking existing users.
- Your Play Console vitals are red: ANRs and crashes spike on Samsung and Xiaomi devices you do not own, and one-star reviews pile up faster than you can reproduce the bugs.
- You have a shipping iOS app and need a native Android build at feature parity, including offline sync, FCM push, and Play billing, not a wrapped web view.
- Your field or logistics app has to work on cheap devices with spotty connectivity, so you need Room, WorkManager, and a sync layer that survives process death and reconnects cleanly.
How we vet Android developers
Every engineer we put forward is screened by a senior Grape5 engineer before you meet them. For Android developers, we look specifically at:
- Coroutines and Flow done right: scoping work to viewModelScope, cancelling correctly, choosing cold flows over hot, and never leaking work with GlobalScope on the main thread.
- State that survives configuration changes and process death using SavedStateHandle and rememberSaveable, so a rotation or a low-memory kill does not wipe what the user typed.
- Diagnosing ANRs and memory leaks: finding main-thread blocking, spotting an Activity or Context held too long, and using LeakCanary and StrictMode to catch it before users do.
- Jetpack Compose recomposition discipline: stable parameters, remember and derivedStateOf, stable keys in lazy lists, and knowing when the old View system is still the right call.
- Play Store release craft: R8 and ProGuard keep rules, Android App Bundles, target API level requirements, staged rollouts, and testing across OS versions and OEM skins, not just the emulator.
Grape5 vs a freelancer marketplace
Grape5
- Who the engineer works for
- Vetted, dedicated, and backed by Grape5 for your engagement.
- Vetting
- Screened by our own senior engineers, code, system design and communication, before you ever meet them.
- Timezone
- 4+ hours of daily overlap with your US working hours, in your tools and standups.
- If it isn't working
- We replace them from the bench, usually within days, at no extra cost.
- Continuity
- The same team, retained and growing with your product.
A freelancer marketplace
- Who the engineer works for
- An independent contractor juggling several clients at once.
- Vetting
- Self-reported skills, a résumé and a star rating.
- Timezone
- Whatever hours the contractor decides to keep.
- If it isn't working
- You re-post the role and start the search from scratch.
- Continuity
- Churn between contracts, the context leaves when they do.
| Grape5 | A freelancer marketplace | |
|---|---|---|
| Who the engineer works for | Vetted, dedicated, and backed by Grape5 for your engagement. | An independent contractor juggling several clients at once. |
| Vetting | Screened by our own senior engineers, code, system design and communication, before you ever meet them. | Self-reported skills, a résumé and a star rating. |
| Timezone | 4+ hours of daily overlap with your US working hours, in your tools and standups. | Whatever hours the contractor decides to keep. |
| If it isn't working | We replace them from the bench, usually within days, at no extra cost. | You re-post the role and start the search from scratch. |
| Continuity | The same team, retained and growing with your product. | Churn between contracts, the context leaves when they do. |
Related roles you can hire
Pre-vetted engineers across adjacent skills, dedicated to your product and your US working hours.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Most real Android work is maintaining and migrating existing apps, not starting fresh. We vet for comfort in legacy Java, the older View and Fragment system, and Gradle build quirks, and for migrating to Kotlin and Compose incrementally, so you are not forced into a risky big-bang rewrite.
We vet for the habit of testing beyond the emulator: real OEM devices, multiple OS versions, and reading Play Console vitals plus crash reports like Crashlytics to reproduce OEM-specific issues on Samsung, Xiaomi, and others. We will not claim a device lab we do not have. Ask any candidate how they would chase a crash they cannot reproduce, and judge the answer.
That depends on what you want them owning. Our engineers can handle App Bundles, signing, R8 configuration, staged rollouts, and Play Console release management, or stop at merged, tested code and hand release to your team. We scope that per engagement so ownership is clear on day one.
Yes, and that mix is normal. Many production apps interleave Compose and the View system through interop, and forcing everything to one or the other is often the wrong call. We vet for judgment on when to use Compose, when to keep Views, and how to bridge them without janky scrolling or duplicated state.
For native apps on both platforms, plan on separate Android and iOS engineers; the frameworks and idioms differ enough that one person rarely does both well. If you are weighing Kotlin Multiplatform to share business logic, we can talk about whether it fits your team, but we will not oversell a single hire as covering both native apps.
Tell us the role. Get vetted profiles.
Send us the seniority and stack you need. We’ll come back with a shortlist of vetted Android developers who’ve shipped it, and a plan to start in 2 to 3 weeks.