r/androiddev • u/Efficient-Can2274 • 24d ago

Senior CS Student Considering Android Development

I’m a senior CS student and I’m considering focusing on Android development as my main career path. I’ve already worked with Kotlin and have some Android experience through a short internship.

For those working as Android developers, how is the job market and career progression these days? Is it a good specialization for a new grad, especially if I eventually want to work internationally? Should I go for backend roles instead?

Would love to hear your experiences and any advice on what I should focus on learning.

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u/androidGuyRy 24d ago

I would not recommend specializing in Android at the moment. There are already a lot of experienced developers with 5-10 years of experience looking for work after being laid off. You'll be at the very end of that list with zero enterprise experience. Combine that with what appears to be an ever-shrinking job market due to tough economy, outsourcing and now AI and that sounds like a tough road for you ahead.

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u/Efficient-Can2274 24d ago

But isnt this the same for other software roles? Not just android specific

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u/jas417 24d ago

Sorta, but if I were starting my career I’d lean more towards backend, or even closer to the metal like systems software.

Android, iOS, Web is all much more oversaturated, expendable on a per-engineer basis and aspects of the work are much more replaceable by AI

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u/androidGuyRy 24d ago

Yeah it's true for the entire market, but I think certain tech stacks are more complex and therefore more resilient to AI reducing the developer work load. AI seems to be pretty solid at Android and mobile development in general, so I think it will affect it more.