iOS Engineer (Senior-Staff Levels)

About Cantina:

Cantina Labs is a social AI company, developing a suite of advanced real-time models that push the boundaries of expression, personality, and realism. We bring characters to life, transforming how people tell stories, connect, and create. We build and power ecosystems. Cantina, our flagship social AI platform, is just the beginning.

If you're excited about the potential AI has to shape human creativity and social interactions, join us in building the future!

About the Role:

As an iOS Engineer at Cantina, you’ll lead the development of innovative, high-performance features — from crafting personalized feeds and immersive custom UIs to empowering bots with AI-driven capabilities like chatting, text-to-speech, voice selection, image creation, and real-time media effects.

Working closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Sean Parker, you’ll influence the direction of a product central to the company’s mission, move quickly to deliver impactful updates, and enjoy the autonomy to bring your ideas to life.

We’re looking for someone who thrives on pushing the limits of iOS development and has a passion for creating visually stunning, high-performance experiences. Your expertise in custom graphics, animation frameworks, and media pipelines will help shape the creative foundation of our flagship app, elevating both user experience and innovation in the social AI space.

What You’ll Do:

Work with frameworks and technologies like UIKit, AVFoundation, Combine, Core Animation, and more.

Lead development of new AI and media-driven features.

Build and optimize video/audio pipelines, real-time media effects, and AI-powered visual features.

Participate in Architecture meetings to help ensure our apps meet the highest quality standards.

Collaborate with Product, Design, and QA teams to deliver polished, scalable experiences.

Take ownership of features — be part of a small team that ships an application to a large user base.

Be part of an incredibly supportive team that values feedback, both positive and career-growth oriented.

What You’ll Bring:

8+ years of experience developing iOS applications, or equivalent education.

Fluency in Swift, UIKit, and Objective-C, with a strong foundation in custom graphics and animation frameworks.

Ability to write readable, maintainable, documented, and thoroughly tested code.

Experience developing integrations with RESTful APIs.

Proficiency with Git and version control workflows.

Basic understanding of Figma — able to determine spacing and sizing; bonus if you can export icons and understand variables.

Experience with video editing, real-time media effects, or AI-driven media features is a plus.

Ability to effectively translate Product, UX, and UI requirements into code.

Skilled at evaluating and communicating engineering solutions and trade-offs to teammates and potentially non-technical stakeholders.

Can create scalable and reusable components that are flexible and modular.

Attention to detail, motion, and animation.

Compensation:

The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is between $180,000-$240,000. When determining compensation, a number of factors will be considered, including skills, experience, job scope, location, and competitive compensation market data.

Benefits:

Competitive salary and generous company equity

Medical, dental, and vision insurance – 99.99% of premiums covered by Cantina

42 days of paid time off, including:

15 PTO days

10 sick days

15 company holidays

2 floating holidays

Generous parental leave & fertility support

401(k) retirement savings plan

Lifestyle spending account – $500/month to use however you’d like

Complimentary lunch and snacks for in-office employees

One Medical membership, and more!