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Dani Arnaout
Verified Expert in Engineering
Minimum Viable Product (MVP) Developer
San Francisco, CA, United States
Toptal member since August 23, 2017
Bio
Dani is a senior engineer based out of San Francisco. He has previously co-founded Saily, a mobile app that was acquired in 2017. In 2018, he was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 for developing the most advanced iOS (Swift/ObjC) framework. He's authored several iOS focused courses, spoken at tech events around the world, and lead large and small teams of talented engineers. Dani now enjoys helping startups build their mobile MVP fast.
Portfolio
Mercari
Swift, iOS, Xcode
Saily
Objective-C, iOS, Xcode
Raywenderlich.com
Arduino, Objective-C, Swift, iOS, Xcode
Experience
- iOS - 8 years
- Xcode - 8 years
- Agile Software Development - 6 years
- Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - 6 years
- Swift - 5 years
Preferred Environment
Objective-C, Swift, iOS, Xcode
The most amazing...
...experience was going on a Euro-trip for 50 days, visiting 12 amazing countries while speaking at tech conferences and organizing hackathons!
Work Experience
Engineer Manager
2017 - PRESENT
Mercari
- Lead the special projects team and built product features using Swift 4.2, RxSwift, MVVM that interacted with APIs and plenty of services like Facebook SDK, Adyen payment processor, and Launch Darkly for A/B tests.
- Won the 'Gold Bold Day' award for building the most innovative MVP for a product feature for Mercari at a 3-day internal hackathon. The idea got patented too.
- Hired more than 30+ software engineers across offices in Palo Alto and Tokyo after revamping the hiring process to raise the engineering bar high.
Technologies: Swift, iOS, Xcode
Co-Founder & CTO
2013 - 2017
Saily
- Lead the technical operations and laid down the technical roadmap as we grew to 500,000 registered users!
- Hired talented engineers after setting up a hiring process similar to Apple's & Google's.
- Created guidelines and coding standards for the engineers to follow.
- Built the core infrastructure for the backend, database. Developed the MVP for the iOS app.
- Adapted Scrum as our agile development framework, and acted as a Scrum Master. This involved daily standup, sprints planning, reviews, & retrospectives. This ensured the work was done on time and all impediments were taken care off on spot.
Technologies: Objective-C, iOS, Xcode
Technical Tutorials Author
2013 - 2016
Raywenderlich.com
- Contributed to the #1 blog for high-quality iOS tutorials by writing 7 tutorials.
- Wrote tutorials that varied from coding with Swift (when Swift was still brand new), to beta testing, building a free & paid versions of your app, all the way to controlling hardware from your iPhone!
- Spoke at various international conference as a tutorial team member.
- Represented the tutorial team as a judge at Apple Watch in Silicon Valley.
- Bumped up my technical/writing skills by getting feedback from top notch engineers that reviewed the tutorials both technically & grammatically.
Technologies: Arduino, Objective-C, Swift, iOS, Xcode
iOS Engineer
2012 - 2015
Lextech Global Services
- Worked with a team of talented mobile engineers, a Scrum Master, and a Product Owner using Scrum as a framework for agile development.
- Developed iOS apps for Fortune 500 companies. Clients included BlueCross BlueShield, Sonic Automotive, Sunbelt Rentals, and CDW.
- Supported all iOS devices including the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad.
- Built projects that included hardware integration with mobile apps for payments processing.
- Contributed to other technologies like Android apps development.
- Wrote tutorials for the company's technical blog.
Technologies: Objective-C, iOS, Xcode
iOS Engineering Team Lead
2012 - 2013
Appwe Ltd.
- Built numerous iOS apps for clients at this software development agency. Apps varied in nature (eCommerce, concerts & events, music, portfolio, restaurants, etc.).
- Managed the team by setting up milestones, assigning tasks, and following up on them.
- Reviewed the code, and ensured that coding standards and guidelines were followed.
- Received requirements from clients directly and acted as a project manager on some projects.
Technologies: Swift, Objective-C, iOS, AppCode, Xcode
iOS Engineer
2011 - 2012
KnowledgeView Ltd.
- Collaborated with a team of 5 other iOS engineers to build apps for clients in the publishers field.
- Co-built newspaper & magazine apps for clients in Europe and Middle East.
- Provided backward compatibility back to iOS 4, and tinkered with Apple's Newsstand to port magazine apps to it.
- Supported 3 languages for each app (English, French, & Arabic). The challenge was to have both LTR & RTL support in the same app for different languages preference.
- Contributed to the weekly technical meetings that introduced new topics, technologies, and APIs.
Technologies: Objective-C, iOS, Xcode
Experience
Saily
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/h10qi33slrbv3zw/AACbqSL-_LDxn6B5gjfsN5Aoa?dl=0Saily is the lovely local marketplace that links you with buyers and sellers around you.
The project started as a side-project and evolved rapidly to become a VC-funded startup. The marketplace had a huge user-base of 500,000 registered users, and a team based out of San Francisco & Beirut.
As Saily's technical co-founder, Dani built version 1 of the iOS app, along with the back-end API and database. The iOS app focused on having a beautiful UI & an engaging user experience, and with added humor here and there, users simply loved it!
Dani then headed the technical operation as the startup's CTO. He laid out the technical roadmap, hired talented engineers, built the core infrastructure, and set up guidelines.
The project started as a side-project and evolved rapidly to become a VC-funded startup. The marketplace had a huge user-base of 500,000 registered users, and a team based out of San Francisco & Beirut.
As Saily's technical co-founder, Dani built version 1 of the iOS app, along with the back-end API and database. The iOS app focused on having a beautiful UI & an engaging user experience, and with added humor here and there, users simply loved it!
Dani then headed the technical operation as the startup's CTO. He laid out the technical roadmap, hired talented engineers, built the core infrastructure, and set up guidelines.
Mercari
https://itunes.apple.com/app/id896130944?mt=8This is Mercari. The fast and easy way to sell or buy almost anything. From fashion to toys, sporting goods to electronics, jewelry to shoes - all the brands you know and love. It’s a snap - list your item in minutes. Got something you don’t use, never used or simply outgrew? Sell it.
Dani leads the special projects team and built product features using Swift 4.2, RxSwift, MVVM that interacted with APIs and plenty of services like Facebook SDK, Adyen payment processor, and Launch Darkly for A/B tests.
Dani leads the special projects team and built product features using Swift 4.2, RxSwift, MVVM that interacted with APIs and plenty of services like Facebook SDK, Adyen payment processor, and Launch Darkly for A/B tests.
Education
2008 - 2013
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering
Beirut University - Beirut, Lebanon
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Fabric, Firebase iOS SDK, X (formerly Twitter) API, Instagram API, Stripe, Facebook API, Google APIs
Tools
Crashlytics, Xcode, Sublime Text 3, AppCode, Sketch 4, Xcode Playgrounds, CircleCI
Languages
Swift, Objective-C
Paradigms
Agile Software Development, Scrum, Design Patterns, MVC Design, App Store Optimization (ASO)
Platforms
iOS, Arduino
Storage
NoSQL, MySQL
Other
Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Software Development, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI)
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