
Ryan Dillon
Verified Expert in Engineering
iOS Developer
Springfield, IL, United States
Toptal member since January 6, 2021
Ryan is a veteran iOS developer with a broad range of experience developing and publishing apps to the App Store since 2010. He specializes in using the audio and animation frameworks of iOS to create tools for musicians. Apart from music-related apps, Ryan has extensive experience building apps that leverage custom and third-party back-end services to enable the creation and synchronization of complex data.
Portfolio
Experience
- Xcode - 8 years
- iOS - 8 years
- Objective-C - 8 years
- UIKit - 8 years
- Core Animation - 6 years
- Core Audio - 4 years
- Swift - 3 years
- REST APIs - 2 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Objective-C, Swift, Xcode, iOS
The most amazing...
...experience I've had as an app creator is seeing my own app for drummers featured in a major industry print publication that I've been reading since I was young.
Work Experience
iOS Developer (Contract)
Spur Staffing
- Handled bug fixes and added features for the iOS native app for workers on the Spur Staffing platform.
- Collaborated with back-end engineers and product designers to keep the app compliant with state regulations in all 50 US states.
- Updated automated testing to fix and extend UI tests.
iOS Developer | UI/UX Designer
Self-employed
- Designed and developed Click, a popular metronome app for iPhone used by thousands of musicians around the world.
- Programmed a real-time audio system using Core Audio, which powers a dynamic and highly accurate metronome. Developed custom animations inside UIKit which are highly performant and perfectly synchronized to the metronome audio.
- Contributed to App Store releases of apps from iOS 3.0 to 14.0, adapting to new devices, design paradigms, and the changing market along the way.
- Designed a unique circular menu system with an API similar to UITableView, but which lays out its elements in a circle. Integrated UIDynamics APIs and custom inertial calculations and animations to create a fluid, physical-feeling interaction.
- Used Core Data APIs for loading of built-in data as well as the persistence of user-generated content.
iOS Developer | UI/UX Designer
Self-employed
- Designed and developed the DrumDictionary, an Apple New and Noteworthy featured app for drummers, which also received recognition in a major drum industry print publication.
- Used Core Data APIs for the loading of built-in data as well as the persistence of user-generated content.
- Worked on App Store releases of apps from iOS 3.0 to 14.0, adapting to new devices, design paradigms, and the changing market along the way.
iOS Developer
Yahoo! - Sports
- Worked in a small team of three developers to implement a redesign of the entire "Daily Fantasy" experience of the Yahoo Fantasy Sports App.
- Introduced SwiftUI into the codebase for the first time, mentored and guided peers in SwiftUI best practices, and created a foundation of reusable components and patterns for future use in the app.
- Designed and implemented a more streamlined interface for analytics reporting, making it easier for developers to adhere to analytics requirements without getting in the way of the "main" logic and functionality of the app.
iOS Developer
Lead Scout
- Oversaw the creation of a custom data-syncing process that allows team members to collaborate in real-time in generating new leads for their roofing businesses.
- Inherited an app with only very basic functionality and worked directly with designers and product owners to turn it into a full-featured product.
- Was solely responsible for all new feature implementation and bug fixes for the iOS mobile client for the Lead Scout service.
- Implemented both iOS client and Ruby on Rails back-end code to manage in-app-purchase subscriptions and coordinated them with the custom web subscription functionality.
- Built a rendering-and-caching system that turns complex, dynamic web views into native images that can be quickly loaded, along with the invalidation logic needed to ensure the caches images are always accurate.
- Implemented a Realm database for storing user-data locally and created a sync engine that provides up-to-date information and data merging; I used standard REST calls for the Ruby-on-Rails back end.
- Used MapKit and annotations views to display user data consisting of, at times, tens of thousands of location data-points along with customized display properties and advanced filtering.
- Managed dependencies using CocoaPods and implemented GitHub for version control and collaboration.
- Developed a custom search functionality that provided a seamless UI and user experience for advanced searching of both new addresses and existing user data by collating and ranking results from external APIs as well as the local existing data cache.
Experience
Metronome App for iOS
http://gigbagapps.com/clickI was the designer and developer for this app, creating everything from the real-time audio processing pipeline to the custom rotation animations and extensive UITableView customizations. I also created an innovative circular menu system to achieve a unique, minimal look.
Lead Generation App for Roofers and Other Home Contractors | iOS
http://leadscoutapp.comI was the iOS developer and worked directly with the back-end and web teams to bring the full host of features available from the service into the mobile app. I helped to design the system for data synchronization between team members. I took 100% ownership over the new features and bug fixes for the mobile app, including integrations with Google Maps and other third-party services, alongside a custom Rails back end.
theDrumDictionary | iOS App for Drummers
http://gigbagapps.com/thedrumdictionarySkills
Libraries/APIs
Core Audio, Core Animation, REST APIs, Google Maps API, Core Graphics
Tools
Xcode
Languages
Swift, Objective-C
Frameworks
UIKit, SwiftUI, MapKit
Platforms
iOS, Firebase
Storage
Realm
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