Ahmed Elkady
Verified Expert in Engineering
iOS Developer
Toronto, ON, Canada
Toptal member since January 13, 2021
Ahmed has been a passionate iOS developer since his internship days in 2014 while studying computer engineering at the University of Waterloo. He has done six internships, most notably at Compass in New York and LinkedIn in San Francisco. After graduating, Ahmed worked at an edtech company called Top Hat for three years, then moved on to Coffee Meets Bagel for two and a half years. He holds a master's degree in computer science from the University of Illinois.
Portfolio
Experience
- Agile Software Development - 8 years
- Git - 8 years
- iOS - 7 years
- Xcode - 6 years
- CocoaPods - 6 years
- Objective-C - 6 years
- Swift - 6 years
- SwiftUI - 2 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Agile Software Development, Algorithms, Git, Objective-C, Swift, iOS, Xcode
The most amazing...
...project I've built is called RichTextView—an open source iOS project starred at least 1000x that can render HTML, Markdown, LaTeX, and YouTube videos.
Work Experience
iOS Developer
Slatable LLC
- Facilitated a major database migration from the v2 version of the app (JSON and plist) to v3 (Realm, now Atlas Device SDK), unblocking a major version upgrade.
- Fixed the subscription pricing in the app to be dynamic and introduced the ability for users to restore their purchases.
- Added tracking around video sharing and various other issues around the app to debug and fix those bugs.
- Introduced support for Bluetooth remote control of the iOS app for script-based auditions.
- Debugged missing take videos and AVFoundation errors.
Swift/Firebase Developer
Dusty
- Added support for users to share their roundtables via a share code.
- Enabled the ability for special users to create custom topics with custom color tinting and badging for users that join those topics.
- Fixed general bugs and updated the project to the latest XCode.
Senior iOS Developer
Coffee Meets Bagel
- Delivered the most successful revenue experiment in the company's history by building a new multi-screen upsell flow that increased D7's total revenue per user by 9.5%.
- Integrated Twilio into the app to build a robust video chat experience that more than 15% of our weekly users use.
- Refactored the app's onboarding flow from Objective-C to Swift, making the code more stable and increasing the app's Swift code by 10% relative to Objective-C.
- Worked with a team of five other iOS developers to fix, improve, and build upon the CoffeeMeetsBagel dating app.
- Participated in refactoring various app components, such as the "Me" avatar screen, to move closer to Swift and MVVM/VIPER architecture.
- Implemented better team processes, including a release rotation.
iOS Developer
Liven
- Converted the remainder of the app's Objective-C code to Swift, moving it from 88% Swift (and 10% Objective-C) to 98% Swift (and 1% Objective-C).
- Fixed bugs and crashes, improving general app stability.
- Participated and contributed to long-term discussions about the future of the iOS codebase.
Mobile Team Lead
Top Hat
- Expanded my responsibilities by taking on a leadership role within the Android and iOS teams, growing the number of direct reports under me to seven in total.
- Responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by rallying the team to build support for our new virtual classroom experience on iOS and Android, enabling professors to continue to deliver lectures to their students remotely.
- Transitioned the mobile team from OKRs as a way to do project planning to the shapeup and cycle process as part of a department-wide effort to transition all the engineering teams.
iOS Team Lead
Top Hat
- Managed and mentored a mix of junior and senior developers as well as remote contractors in a team of three iOS developers.
- Delivered an all-hands speech in front of the whole company highlighting the progress we made in the iOS app rewrite, specifically the classroom experience.
- Rewrote the entire guidebook experience and analytics architecture on the iOS app, making the code more scalable, maintainable, and stable.
- Created Top Hat's first iOS open source project (Richtextview.com), an iOS UI TextView (UIView) that properly displays LaTeX, HTML, Markdown, and YouTube/Vimeo links, amassing 200 stars and 8 forks within the first week of the first release.
Senior iOS Developer
Top Hat
- Participated in an entire iOS app rewrite, moving 30% of the project's code to Swift within the first six months.
- Championed a week-long project to streamline and standardize our dependency management system, moving from a mixture of Carthage and static dependencies to CocoaPods, removing approximately 100,000 lines of code in the process.
- Contributed to the rewrite of the entire question experience on iOS to Swift, improving the app's weekly crash-free rating from an all-time low of 96.5% to 99.5% and the App Store rating from 3.2 to 4.5 stars out of 5.
- Established the team's accessibility standards and Swift code style guides.
iOS Developer
Top Hat
- Led the technical planning around re-architecting the entire student classroom experience on iOS.
- Participated in a complete overhaul of our iOS network engine, moving from Objective-C and RestKit to Swift, Codable, and PromiseKit.
- Championed a week-long project to standardize and streamline our UI/UX process on mobile, including colors, font sizes, and images.
- Worked with the rest of the department to bring a vast array of web features to our iOS app, including tournaments, Top Hat Test, and third-party questions.
iOS Developer
Compass
- Worked with a team of three developers to manage five iOS applications for the luxury homes market, developing features that led to an 80% engagement rate on our apps.
- Utilized polygon drawing and correction algorithms to enable users to draw custom boundaries on a map, in order to filter particular regions in a real estate search.
- Architected major portions of the agents app, adding the ability for agents to see and interact with their clients, as well as view their own listing and search history.
- Strengthened the Swift API layer in our apps to better communicate with and translate Thrift data structures coming from our servers.
iOS Developer
- Worked on the messaging portion of the flagship iOS app with eight other iOS developers and approximately two dozen other developers, project managers, and designers.
- Developed a feature that allowed LinkedIn employees to message their coworkers and add them to group conversations, working with an Android and back-end developer.
- Enhanced the messaging experience by enabling users to see the content of URLs sent in the app by showing a basic image, title, and description along with inline YouTube videos.
- Enriched the user experience by modernizing the loading animation across messaging.
Mobile Application Developer
Autodesk
- Used iOS Objective-C, Lua, and C++ to develop a contest feature for Sculpt+, a 3D-intensive social media app where users could share self-created 3D models.
- Updated the Android app to be Gradle-based, reducing build speeds by up to 50%.
- Improved the internal Kalpana 3D framework which was used by multiple Autodesk apps.
Software Developer
Metroland
- Used the Appcelerator framework to work on the Save.ca hybrid mobile application, part of Canada’s largest online shopping savings and deals ecosystem.
- Used JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Android Java, and jQuery to develop a new method of favouriting flyers and redesign the camera module, increasing the app’s rating by 0.3 stars over the course of my employment.
- Performed routine bug fixes and updated the app to iOS 8 and Android Lollipop.
Experience
RichTextView
https://www.richtextview.comAs the sole developer, I was involved on the ground floor of this project, from creation to deployment to maintenance, as well as putting it in the CocoaPods Specs repo so that anyone can integrate it into their projects.
Interactive Computer Graphics Course Project
http://www.ahmedelkady.xyz/uiuc-cs418-aelkady2/Personal Website
http://www.ahmedelkady.xyzEducation
Master's Degree in Computer Science
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign - Remote
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering
University of Waterloo - Waterloo, Canada
Skills
Libraries/APIs
CocoaPods, PromiseKit, SnapKit, SDWebImage, Alamofire, Core Image, REST APIs, iOS Native Libraries, Nimble-Snapshots, Google Maps SDK, Core Animation, Apple Subscriptions, Camera API, Sockets, Socket.IO, Stripe, WebGL, Lottie-iOS
Tools
Xcode, Git, GitHub, TestFlight, iTunes Connect, Figma, CircleCI, Gradle, Appcelerator Titanium, AVPlayer, TokBox, CallKit, ChatGPT
Languages
Swift, Objective-C, Swift 4, Java, Lua, C++, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, PHP
Frameworks
SwiftUI, iOS SDK, UIKit, iOS Frameworks, Core Data, Cocoa Touch, Cocoa, Android SDK, Metal, CloudKit, gRPC
Paradigms
VIPER Architecture, Mobile Development, Agile Software Development, Model View ViewModel (MVVM), Gamification, UX Design, iOS UI Design
Platforms
iOS, Firebase, Apple, Mobile, Twilio, Android, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Algolia, iCloud
Storage
Realm, Database Management Systems (DBMS)
Other
Teamwork, Apps, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), App Store, Mobile Applications, Architecture, SDK Development, Scalability, Abstraction, APIs, iPhone, Mobile Apps, Frameworks, Mobile Architecture, Mobile App Development, API Integration, Algorithms, Carthage, LiveStream, Streaming, AVFoundation, Video Codecs, Video Streaming, UI Animation, Subscriptions, Apple Pay, iOS Camera, Full-stack, App Design, iOS Animations, Video Livestreaming, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), CI/CD Pipelines, Social Media Apps, In-app Purchase (IAP), In-app Purchases, Monetization, Open Source, Team Leadership, Hybrid Apps, Compilers, Computer Graphics, Data Visualization, Data Cleaning, Lottie, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Game Development, Entertainment & Leisure, Networks, Instant Messaging, PSD to Swift, Web UX, Sensor Data, Google Analytics 4, eCommerce, Bluetooth, Audio
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