Tim RichardsonFreelance iOS engineer
About

A senior iOS engineer who gets involved and delivers.

I am Tim Richardson, a freelance iOS engineer with 15 years in software. I have worked inside agency delivery teams, large product organisations and small teams building an app from the ground up.

I enjoy the hands-on work: building features, collaborating with designers, reviewing code and getting releases out. I can join your team or take ownership of iOS delivery, with the technical depth to work through difficult architecture and performance decisions along the way.

Open to contracts, project delivery or ongoing support, with a working arrangement that fits your team.

View my engineer profile

Product ownership and engineering depth

I built GlowUp’s iOS product from the ground up and ran it for three years of App Store releases and data-informed iteration. That included the SwiftUI app, subscriptions, analytics, CI/CD, localisation into more than 30 languages, and the initial Node and TypeScript middleware around its generative image backend.

At Motorway, I worked in a large multi-squad mobile organisation on a SwiftUI marketplace app used at national scale. I owned a companion App Clip that went on to handle more than 70% of the organisation’s photo uploads. At Westpac, I worked in the core architecture team on modular boundaries, UIKit-to-SwiftUI migration, Swift 6 adoption and production performance.

I have also led iOS work in health, built and supported a commercial SDK embedded by tier-one banks, and repeatedly built CI and release systems that make shipping safer rather than harder.

Working with agencies and their clients

At Waracle I led iOS engineering across several large client codebases, often concurrently. At Hanno I led mobile development, worked directly with clinicians and designers, and was involved in the client relationship.

I am comfortable working alongside account managers, project managers and engineers, joining client discussions and representing an agency as part of its team. Planning, reviews and clear handovers are part of delivering the work.

I am happy to discuss full-time or part-time work, remote or on-site arrangements, and working hours that fit your team.

How I work

  • Measure before changing.Reproduce the problem and collect evidence before reaching for a large solution.
  • Modernise incrementally.Preserve delivery while improving the parts of the system that create the most risk.
  • Write for the next person.Reports, decision records and code should make the next step easier for an internal team or a future engineer.
  • Treat product quality as engineering.Accessibility, interaction, analytics, reliability and App Store operations belong in the technical conversation.
  • Be candid about trade-offs.A client should understand what is urgent, what can wait, and what is not worth doing.

Selected career history

A short selection rather than a full CV. This is factual career history, not a list of consultancy clients.

  1. Westpac

    Lead iOS Engineer

    Swift 6, architecture, modernisation and production performance in a national banking app used by millions.

  2. GlowUp

    Lead iOS Engineer / Engineering Lead

    Zero-to-App-Store ownership of a global consumer product, then three years of data-informed iteration.

  3. Motorway

    Senior/Lead iOS Engineer

    National-scale SwiftUI marketplace product, and ownership of a high-impact App Clip.

  4. Unblu

    Lead iOS Engineer

    Sole iOS engineer on a commercial SDK used by tier-one financial institutions, including Credit Suisse and UBS.

  5. Hanno

    Tech Lead / Mobile Lead

    Mobile lead for a clinician and patient health product with Bluetooth sensor data and encrypted health information.

  6. Waracle

    Lead iOS Engineer · Contract

    Led iOS engineering across several large agency client codebases, often concurrently, with hands-on delivery, review and mentoring.

  7. Earlier work

    Lead and senior iOS roles

    Impero, uMotif, AOL, Axon Vibe and other native mobile products, back to the first releases of Swift and Objective-C.

Selected apps

Products I built independently, alongside apps where I was one of the engineers on a larger team. Each role label says which is which.

GlowUp – AI Photo Generator

Lead iOS engineer; built from zero and operated for three years

A global consumer AI product taken from a blank Xcode project to the App Store, then run through three years of data-informed iteration. SwiftUI throughout, with subscriptions, analytics, CI/CD and localisation into more than 30 languages.

Motorway: Sell Your Car

Senior/Lead iOS engineer and App Clip owner

A national-scale SwiftUI marketplace app built inside a large multi-squad mobile organisation. Tim owned the companion App Clip that went on to handle more than 70% of the organisation’s photo uploads. This was team work; Tim was one of many engineers on the product.

Technical coverage

Native UI
SwiftUI, UIKit, accessibility, localisation, animation, and adaptive iPhone and iPad layouts.
Modern Swift
Swift 6 strict concurrency, async/await, actors, Combine, and Objective-C migration.
Architecture
Modularisation, Swift Package Manager, MVVM, the Composable Architecture, Coordinators, state-driven UI and dependency design.
Reliability
Instruments, launch time, scrolling performance, memory, Crashlytics and Datadog RUM.
Delivery
GitHub Actions, Fastlane, Xcode Cloud, Jenkins, Bitrise, TestFlight and phased releases.
Product systems
StoreKit, subscriptions, analytics, A/B testing, Firebase, BigQuery and App Store operations.
Security-sensitive work
Keychain, encryption, certificate pinning, biometrics and token lifecycle.

Elsewhere

The quickest way to reach me is email. My professional history is on LinkedIn.

Have a project or a role in mind?

Send me a brief or an outline of your team’s needs. I am happy to discuss the work and how I could fit in.

Discuss a project