Senior React Native Engineer (Real-Time Location Platform) - Full-time - Worldwide

About the role

Orbit Connection PBC is building a consent-based proximity platform. We're pre-launch, seed-funded, and hiring our first engineer to build the MVP alongside the founder.

The core mechanic: Two independent users, both moving, both anonymous to each other until mutual consent, navigating toward a convergence point that recalculates continuously. Plus, an instant-disconnect that has to be genuinely instant.

If you've only built location features that pin a user to a fixed destination, this will be new territory. That's fine, but we need someone who's worked with continuous location streams, not just one-shot geolocation calls.

Scope

Roughly 14 weeks across four sprints:
Sprint 1: Auth, biometric verification integration (Persona), profile creation, AI-assisted profile flow
Sprint 2: Proximity radar, mutual consent gate, instant-disconnect
Sprint 3: Convergence navigation, density mapping, venue-facing data endpoints
Sprint 4: Integration testing, third-party security audit remediation, App Store submission

Required

• 5+ years mobile, 3+ years React Native in production
• Shipped at least one consumer app to the App Store and Play Store
• Real-time location experience: background location, continuous position streaming, battery-conscious geofencing, handling GPS degradation indoors and in dense urban environments
• Backend competence - Supabase, Firebase, or equivalent. You'll own the data layer, not just consume an API
• WebSocket or equivalent real-time transport at scale
• Comfortable owning architecture decisions and explaining tradeoffs to a non-engineer founder

Strongly preferred

• Two-way or multi-user coordination (rideshare, delivery, live tracking, multiplayer)
• Identity verification integrations
• WCAG accessibility experience
• Have opinions about location privacy and can defend them

How we work

• Two-week paid trial scope first: auth flow and profile creation, working and demoable. If it's a fit on both sides, we extend to the full build.
• Weekly sync with the founder. Async otherwise. You'll have direct product access, no layers, no committee.
• Constraints you should know up front
• User data never enters third-party AI training. Inference only. This is architectural, not aspirational.
• Independent security audit before any user touches the product. All findings should be resolved.
• Accessibility is a requirement, not a phase-two item.