Engineering Mgr - Native Apps

About TEGNA

TEGNA Inc. (NYSE: TGNA) helps people thrive in their local communities by providing the trusted local news and services that matter most. With 64 television stations in 51 U.S. markets, TEGNA reaches more than 100 million people monthly across the web, mobile apps, streaming, and linear television. Together, we are building a sustainable future for local news.

We are looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our Native Applications teams, responsible for the iOS and Android mobile applications we build and operate. In this role, you will own delivery outcomes, operational health, and team execution across our mobile app teams, ensuring high-quality user experiences, consistent platform performance, and strong release discipline on both platforms.

You will partner closely with platform Team Leads, backend services, infrastructure, and QA to ensure our native applications deliver compelling live and VOD experiences and personalized content to millions of users.

This is a hybrid position based in Knoxville, TN, with regular collaboration across engineering, product, and design teams.

Responsibilities:

Domain Ownership and Execution

• Own delivery outcomes and operational health for iOS and Android applications

• Lead execution across both platforms, ensuring feature parity, platform consistency, and release quality

• Ensure consistent performance, reliability, and user experience across device types and OS versions

• Translate product priorities into executable plans across native app teams

• Balance feature delivery with platform stability, app store compliance, and technical debt reduction

People Leadership

• Directly manage iOS and Android Team Leads

• Coach Team Leads on execution, release ownership, and people leadership

• Ensure teams have clear ownership, priorities, and accountability

• Support career development and performance management for all direct reports

• Foster team health, engagement, and a culture aligned with our guiding engineering principles

Delivery and Release Oversight

• Accountable for release outcomes for native applications on both iOS and Android

• Ensure teams follow shared release standards, rollout strategies, and App Store and Google Play submission processes

• Partner with Team Leads during release windows and post-release validation

• Review post-release analytics, crash reporting, and performance metrics

• Ensure issues discovered after release are triaged and addressed quickly

Operational Excellence

• Act as an escalation point for native app incidents and production issues

• Partner with infrastructure and backend teams during platform or delivery issues

• Support incident response and post-incident reviews for mobile-related problems

• Drive improvements in observability, crash reporting, and monitoring within native apps

• Identify systemic reliability risks and prioritize remediation efforts

Product Partnership

• Serve as the primary engineering partner for the Product Director responsible for native applications, owning the relationship at the domain level

• Collaborate closely with the Product Director on roadmap planning, providing engineering perspective on feasibility, sequencing, and technical readiness

• Contribute to and review technical planning documents, architecture proposals, and delivery estimates that inform product decisions

• Advise product on tradeoffs between feature delivery, platform stability, and technical debt, ensuring the engineering perspective shapes what gets prioritized and when

• Bridge the gap between product vision and engineering reality, ensuring commitments are grounded in team capacity, platform constraints, and delivery confidence

• Own the strategic-level conversation about how engineering teams are organized and resourced to support product goals, treating team structure as an engineering decision informed by product needs

• Coordinate with product on cross-team or cross-pod initiatives that span multiple Team Leads or require domain-wide alignment

Cross-Team Collaboration

• Partner with web, CTV, backend, streaming infrastructure, and QA teams

• Coordinate dependencies between native app teams and shared platform services

• Communicate risks, tradeoffs, and timelines clearly to stakeholders

• Ensure alignment between app-level behavior and backend streaming and content capabilities

Strategy and Planning

• Partner with Product and leadership on the native applications roadmap

• Own capacity planning and hiring needs for iOS and Android teams

• Balance short-term delivery needs with long-term platform health and architectural evolution

• Contribute to technical direction for shared mobile components, playback frameworks, and analytics integration

Requirements:

What We’re Looking For

• 7 or more years of experience in software engineering with a focus on native mobile applications

• 3 or more years of experience in an engineering management or senior technical leadership role

• Strong experience with iOS (Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit) or Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose), with familiarity across both platforms

• Deep understanding of mobile app lifecycles, performance considerations, and platform-specific failure modes

• Experience managing delivery across multiple teams or pods

• Proven ability to lead teams through releases and production issues on iOS and Android

• Familiarity with App Store and Google Play submission, review, and rollout processes

• Strong communication skills and ability to partner across disciplines

Bonus Points

• Experience with video playback, live streaming, or media-heavy mobile applications

• Experience integrating analytics, ad tech, and personalization in mobile applications

• Experience working closely with backend or streaming infrastructure teams

Why Join Us

You will join an engineering organization where native mobile applications are a core product surface used by millions of viewers across the country. At TEGNA, you will play a key role in shaping the reliability, quality, and evolution of our iOS and Android experiences.

You will have the opportunity to lead talented teams, improve how we ship and operate mobile

Benefits:

TEGNA offers comprehensive benefits designed to safeguard the physical, mental and financial health of our employees and their families. TEGNA offers two medical plan options for full and part-time employees through Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, as well as access to dental and eye care coverage; fertility, surrogacy and adoption assistance; disability and life insurance.

Our 401(k) program offers full, part-time and temporary employees the opportunity to contribute 1% - 80% of their pay on a pre-tax basis to TEGNA’s 401(k). Contributions made up to the first 4% of pay are eligible for a 100% match from the company and are 100% vested from day one.

Regardless of participation in TEGNA medical plans, ALL employees and their eligible family members receive nine free virtual doctor’s appointments with a physician through Teladoc, and 12 free annual therapy sessions with a licensed clinician through Spring Health.

TEGNA offers a generous Paid Time Off (PTO) benefit as well as nine paid holidays per year.

* Some jobs are covered by a collective bargaining agreement and thus some or all of the benefits described herein may not apply. For example, some newsroom bargaining unit employees receive health and retirement benefits under plans administered by the union.

EEO statement:

TEGNA Inc. is a proud equal opportunity employer. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, hiring and developing individuals from diverse backgrounds and experiences to add to our collaborative culture. We value and consider applications from all qualified candidates without regard to actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, disability, medical condition, enrollment in college or vocational school, political affiliation, military or veteran status, citizenship status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by federal, state or local law. TEGNA will reasonably accommodate qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with applicable law. If you are in need of an accommodation in order to submit your application, please email [email protected]

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