Ahmed Denison-Afifi
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Ahmed has five years of experience building iOS and Android applications. He was previously a senior software engineer at Zynga working—across mobile and web—on games such as Farmville, Running with Friends, and Looney Tunes Dash. While at Zynga, Ahmed also developed and delivered iOS applications for the Neuroscape lab at UCSF. Additionally, Ahmed has spent years helping startups polish their ideas into shipped products.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Android Studio, Sublime Text, ITerm, Xcode, MacOS
The most amazing...
...product I've released was a mobile game which received an Editor's Choice designation in the App Store and was installed by over 100 million players.
Work Experience
Elixir/Phoenix Developer
Fanhero
- Migrated an active Node.js API to Phoenix while restructuring to optimize for Elixir/OTP capabilities and minimizing reliance on external service such as RabbitMQ.
iOS Developer
Gruper
- Optimized an existing Firebase implementation, denormalizing the JSON real-time database and allowing for a more responsive interface.
CTO
MSH Labs
- Used Phoenix WebSocket technology to create a highly real-time iOS application.
- Leveraged AVFoundation to create a media capture mechanism to share details about events.
- Implemented an innovative interface for friends to share events in their lives.
Senior Software Engineer
Zynga
- Created a cross-platform data patching system to allow iOS and Android players to fetch new levels and content.
- Developed a Unity sample project demonstrating Zynga shared technology implementations.
- Leveraged the Java Native Interface to share C++ code between iOS and Android games.
- Implemented a rolling buffer of tracking calls in C++ to be batched and uploaded while minimizing the frame-rate impact.
- Volunteered with the Neuroscape Lab at the University of California, San Francisco to build Meditrain—a meditation application used in clinical trials.
- Volunteered with the Neuroscape Lab at the University of California, San Francisco to build ACE—a battery of cognitive tests used to assist in clinical trials and openly distributed to other labs.
Lead Developer
PlayerPro
- Created a PHP RESTful back end using the Symfony framework.
- Utilized PhoneGap to build a cross-platform mobile application.
- Developed an initial Android native client.
Experience
MSH
I joined the project during the ideation phase and brought the product from a set of mockups to a production-level application available in the App Store. I built the majority of the iOS application as well—deciding on the architectural patterns used along the way to support a robust, lively application. In addition to the iOS application, I built a Phoenix web application running on Heroku which leverages WebSockets to support the real-time nature of the application.
Looney Tunes Dash!
I led the Android development for the project—building a cross-platform architecture utilizing C++ to run on both iOS and Android. I also regularly assisted in building the iOS front-end in addition to leading the Android development.
Looney Tunes Dash! received an Editor's Choice from the iOS App Store after the release and reached an audience of over 100 million players
Meditrain
I was responsible for both architecting and building the iOS application which supported engagement features like a calendar and progress-tracking as well as the core meditation experience with an adaptive loop.
UCSF's lab was extremely pleased with Meditrain and there is a patent filed and pending.
ACE
I was responsible for the architecture and implementation of the iOS application, including 11 cognitive tasks and their adaptive algorithms.
UCSF was satisfied with our work on ACE and intend on making it freely available to the public worldwide.
Farmville
https://apps.facebook.com/onthefarm/Skills
Languages
Swift, Objective-C, HTML, C++, Elixir, Java, Bash, YAML, Bash Script, JavaScript, Groovy, XML/XSLT, Scheme, Python, PHP, Ruby
Tools
Zeplin, Xcode, Git, GitHub, Sublime Text 3, ITerm, Sublime Text, Android Studio, Apache Ant, Vim Text Editor, Emacs, Sketch
Platforms
iOS, Android, MacOS, Firebase
Frameworks
Phoenix, JNI, Unity, PhoneGap, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Sails.js
Paradigms
Reactive Programming, Continuous Integration (CI), Test-driven Development (TDD), Continuous Deployment, Agile, Pair Programming, Functional Programming, REST
Other
WebSockets, AVFoundation, iOS Camera, Location Tracking, GitFlow, HTTPS
Libraries/APIs
jQuery, Google Geocoding API, Google Maps API, Twilio API, Firebase iOS SDK, Node.js
Storage
SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley - Berkeley, CA, USA
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
Share your needs
Choose your talent
Start your risk-free talent trial
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring