Thinking About My Next Move — Would Love Some Perspective
After 13 years in the mobile domain, I’m exploring what’s next in my career. I’ve worked across different areas of mobile development and product evolution, and now I’m considering a company change.
I’d love to hear from others who’ve made similar transitions — especially into top tech or product-driven companies.
A few things I’m thinking about:
Should I focus more on strengthening algorithms and data structures to target top-tier companies?
Or should I lean on my domain expertise and deepen my skills around system design, mobile architecture, and scalability?
Any advice, resources, or interview prep tips would be really appreciated.
Thanks in advance to everyone who shares their experience — this community has always been a great place to learn from.
If your target is top tier product companies you can’t ignore DSA, I would suggest the combination should be DSA + Mobile domain knowledge + Mobile System Design + Back end knowledge + Mobile telemetry
Does fintecks like mastercard, amex come in top tier pbcs ?
Android Dev here with 2.5 YOE here. How do you see the market for mobile engineers in the upcoming years and whether native development will stay relevant with the growing popularity of cross-platform tools like RN and Flutter?
According to me, it depends on the type of companies you are targeting.
For India Based Startups or new/early based startups; definitely cross platform is the way to go. There are just a handful of good startups which have big mobile teams (native)
For big tech; even though there are advancements in cross platform but it can never ever eradicate the advantages of having a full native codebase and team.
I mean think of what the app/product is doing. Most of the Indian startups are just showing lists and cards, with beautiful UI and all. That’s why the cross platform shines. Still there are companies which are going full native and full on optimisations & highly performant apps. RN and Flutter, cannot handle those at the moment and at that scale.
Any advice to a 5 yr exp mobile dev?
Currently I'm working with flutter and nodejs.
What's your tech stack?
It sounds like a natural and exciting point in your journey. After over a decade in mobile development, focusing on system design, architecture, and leading complex projects end-to-end would definitely position you well for senior or lead roles.
You could also highlight your experience mentoring other engineers and driving technical planning — these are key traits companies look for at that level. Additionally, brushing up on DSA fundamentals can help clear initial technical screenings, especially if you’re targeting top-tier product companies.
Exploring opportunities where you can shape the architecture and long-term technical vision of mobile products could be a great next step for you.
My 2 cents (being on the same boat):
- Depends on what next you select for yourself and love to do (either management or going deep-dive in mobile domain or exploring something new like BE)
Every path has its own challenges.
- Every generic management domain requires prior experience of backend development
- Every mobile management domain requires your interest towards it. (I am sure you might be well aware of the pros here, but the cons are immense too: like not well versed with the current trending stack, which can become a rabbit hole)
- Going deep dive into mobile domain: safest but has a proof of concept in your own career that you have worked and excelled. Like: Staff/Principal Mobile Engineer (but roles are very few and majorly in top tech only)
- Different domain: like backend or dev ops: seems interesting but fruitful in the longer run, as its a more generic role and that too pretty vast. So, not going anywhere anytime soon
Any advice for 7 years experienced Mobile App Developer
