
Zsolt Szatmári
Verified Expert in Engineering
C++ Developer
Budapest, Hungary
Toptal member since March 3, 2017
Zsolt is a Swift (iOS/macOS) and C++ engineer moving deeper into Rust. He builds native Apple apps, with a soft spot for music and audio. Coding since primary school, he favors functional design and treats test-driven development as non-negotiable for code you can rely on. AI stance: LLMs are wonderful tools, not oracles. Blind trust hurts code quality and security: generated code still needs full review, and tricking an AI agent into leaking code or secrets is far easier than most teams assume.
Portfolio
Experience
- C++ - 9 years
- iOS - 8 years
- Objective-C - 6 years
- REST - 6 years
- iPhone SDK - 6 years
- Swift - 5 years
- SwiftUI - 4 years
- SQLite - 4 years
Work Experience
Senior Developer
Byrd Agency Limited
- Single-handedly built the macOS version of the Supreme, a daily to-do app by Byrd Agency, from scratch in Swift and AppKit.
- Designed and wrote the codebase shared between the macOS and iOS apps, so both platforms ran on the same data model and core logic.
- Implemented offline-first iCloud sync between Mac and iOS devices: Realm as the local store, CloudKit for the cloud, with no user accounts and no developer access to user data.
- Built a keyboard-friendly native Mac UI with drag-and-drop rescheduling, inline editing and automatic roll-over of unfinished tasks.
- Also contributed to UIKit-based iOS app, building on the shared core so the iPhone and Mac versions behaved the same way.
- Structured the app's data flow reactively with ReactiveSwift, keeping UI and storage in sync across both platforms.
Sole Proprietor | Senior Engineer
Gear Music Player
- Built and solo-shipped Gear Player, a native macOS (then Mac OS X) client for Google Play Music and YouTube in Objective-C and C++; released updates from 2012 to 2019, later adding iOS and Windows versions.
- Replicated core iTunes features from scratch, including library and playlist management, gapless playback, a graphic equalizer, offline listening, and album, artist, and genre views.
- Integrated Chromecast and AirPlay output, including playback to multiple devices at once, plus Last.fm scrobbling and Notification Center.
- Sustained 200+ paid downloads per month at a $5 price point with zero marketing spend, holding a near-5-star App Store rating among Google Play Music users who wanted a native desktop player.
iPhone Developer
Appz4
- Owned iOS development of Practify, a gamified learning app, delivering it on a tight agency timeline.
- Owned iOS development of Outfit Gurus, a social clothing-suggestion app where users get outfit advice from their network.
- Delivered both client apps under agency guidelines, moving quickly between projects while keeping the codebases maintainable.
Senior Software Engineer
Merlin Developments
- Took over the development of NewsBar, a paid RSS reader for OS X (now macOS), and turned it into a commercial success. Under my watch it was almost constantly the #1 paid app in the US App Store's News category.
- Ported NewsBar to Iphone and iPad, turning a Mac-only product into an app available across Apple's platforms.
- Built sync between the Mac, iPhone and iPad apps before CloudKit existed, propagating changes through files in iCloud storage and designing my own conflict handling for concurrent edits across devices.
- Integrated the Feedly and Pocket APIs, letting useres sync NewsBar with their Feedly account and send articles to Pocket to read them later.
- Extended the reader beyond RSS with Twitter feeds, keyword highlighting and filtering, and Notification Center alerts for matching items.
Software Engineer
LogMeIn (now GoTo Inc)
- Worked in a small team on the iOS and Android clients of LogMeIn Ignition (later renamed LogMeIn), a remote desktop app, contributing to virtually every part of both codebases.
- Did substantial work on remote screen rendering on both platforms: OpenGL ES on Android and CALayer based tile rendering on iOS.
- Single-handedly built remote audio streaming for the Android client on top of the low-level AudioTrack API, including a custom circular buffer implementation, gracefully handling buffer underflows, and kept it working all the way back to Android 1.5.
- Played a major role in the fast-tracked Android tablet release when Honeycomb first brought tablet support to the platform.
- Worked on the iOS client of Cubby, LogMeIn's cloud storage and file sync service, as part of the team that took it from development to its 2012 launch.
Project History
Supreme
NewsBar for macOS
idunn: Sign in with Apple for Rust backends
RunTogether Runner
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sportlabs.android.runnerEducation
Master's Degree in Psychology
University of Szeged - Szeged
Bachelor's Degree in Psychology
University of Szeged - Szeged, Hungary
Master's Degree in Physics
Budapest University of Technology and Economics - Budapest, Hungary
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, REST APIs, React, FFmpeg, Auth, Tokio
Tools
Xcode, Git, Sketch, Adobe CS6
Languages
C++, Objective-C, Swift, JavaScript, Java, C, Kotlin, CSS, HTML, Haskell, Rust
Frameworks
ReactiveCocoa, iPhone SDK, SwiftUI, ReactiveSwift, Combine, AppKit, UIKit, RealmSwift, Cocoa, Core Data, JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
Paradigms
REST, Functional Programming, Test-driven Development (TDD)
Platforms
iOS, MacOS, Android, iCloud
Storage
SQLite, PostgreSQL, Realm, MongoDB, MySQL
Other
Mobile Security, APIs, Architecture, Cognitive Psychology, Musicianship, Physics, Mathematics, Calculus, Differential Equations, Numerical Methods, Numerical Modeling, Psychology & Mental Health, Psychoanalysis, RSS Feeds, API Design, GitHub Actions, Open Source, Artifical intelligence, Large Language Models (LLMs)
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