Vadim Drobinin (last updated: 13 Nov 2025)

vadim@drobinin.com · drobinin.com · valzevul · valzevul · @valzevul

Senior iOS Engineer with 10+ years building apps that delight users and solve complex problems. I’ve shipped products acquired by Twitter, featured by Apple, and recognised by CES and the Webby Awards. Experienced across SwiftUI/TCA, on-device ML, medical-grade systems, and large-scale architectural modernisation.

Experience ¶

• Founder & Lead Engineer @ Drobinin Limited, Vancouver, BC (2025 – Present)

  • Featured by Apple in Top Paid/Grossing across EMEA & AMER; several apps also reached the front page of Hacker News.
  • Design complex on-device systems across ML, computer vision, simulation engines, and practical OWASP/reverse engineering security work.
  • Build and ship profitable, high-quality iOS apps end-to-end, including among others:
    • Fermento — fermentation & HACCP automation using decision trees, sensor data, and on-device reasoning.
    • Residency — travel/tax residency “compiler warnings” built on timezone edge cases, state machines, and what-if simulations.
    • Notch — shooting target analysis with VisionKit and custom CV pipelines.
    • Layered — AI wardrobe & outfit generator (LLMs, embeddings, cost-per-wear logic).

• Senior iOS Engineer @ LivaNova, London, UK (May 2020 – May 2025)

  • Engineered BLE/NFC medical device connectivity; supported HIPAA compliance implementation for patient data safety.
  • Led architectural overhaul to SwiftUI & Composable Architecture and drove adoption of modern Apple APIs & HIG, contributing to App Store feature (4.9/5 rating).
  • Developed & maintained custom AWS SDK fork, accelerating company-wide backend migration to AWS.
  • Led iOS GraphQL/AWS integration and launched standalone watchOS app, which significantly increased user retention.
  • Designed iOS hiring & onboarding framework, adopted company-wide; key interviewer for team growth; automated release/testing pipelines & performed OWASP MASVS security audits (>70% compliance).

• Senior iOS Engineer @ Sphere (acquired by Twitter), London, UK (2017-2020)

  • Pivotal early-stage engineer; architected & scaled iOS app through high growth, securing $30M+ investment and leading to Twitter acquisition.
  • Led R&D on an E2E testing framework, increasing crash-free rate to 99.99%.
  • Migrated client networking to Protobuf, cutting significantly cutting traffic.
  • Architected an in-app chat ad platform, doubling the CTR.

• Mobile Engineering Consultant @ Drobinin Limited, remote (2013 – 2017)

  • Built commercial iOS apps and led distributed teams for global clients; won Apple WWDC Scholarship.
  • Fractional Head of Engineering for ventures: built high-performance teams, scaled ops; led fitness app's mobile dev to acquisition via USA/UAE expansion.
  • Speaker at industry conferences on NLP and language processing technologies (NLP in Swift @ iOSDevUK 2019).
  • Authored & delivered an intensive 22-week iOS course for 70+ engineers at VK.com's university.

• Lead iOS Engineer @ ToBox, remote (2015-2016)

  • Led iOS team (scaled from 2 to 8), architecting transition to MVVM, reducing technical debt.
  • Implemented Git Flow, boosted test automation, and optimised CI/CD pipelines.
  • Directed Swift rewrite of core chat framework, decreasing buyer churn by third.

• Founder / CTO @ Blue Platter, remote (2014-2015)

  • Founded and architected a mobile startup from concept to beta launch, simultaneously leading technical development and product strategy.

• Cloud Architect & Software Engineer @ Drobinin Limited, remote (2008-2013)

  • Delivered 10+ complex projects specializing in scalable REST APIs and cloud architecture (Google App Engine, Django).
  • Mentored 40+ students in Python.

Awards ¶

• Member of British Computer Society (2024)
• 2021 Webby Honoree, Best Apps/Software
• 2021 CES Best of Innovation, Health/Wellness
• 2021 CES Innovation Award, Software/Mobile Apps
• Google Material Design Award (2020)
• Apple WWDC Scholarship (2015)
• Technology Entrepreneurship (with Merit) – Stanford University (2014)

Current stack ¶

• iOS, watchOS, iPadOS, tvOS experience
• Swift, Objective-C, SwiftUI, UIKit
• The Composable Architecture (TCA), Swift Concurrency, ReactiveSwift, Combine
• AI/ML: Core ML, Natural Language Framework, MCP (Model Context Protocol), LLM integrations, agent architectures
• SPM, Fastlane, Github Actions, CircleCI
• Algorithms & Data Structures, Mobile Security (OWASP MASVS, HIPAA), System Architecture, API Design (GraphQL, REST), BLE/NFC, Git, LLDB

Education ¶

• BEng (Hons) in Software Engineering @ National Research University HSE
  Thesis on DNA restoration algorithms (Optimization of DNA restoration algorithms based on the genetic diagnosis and words reconstruction with forbidden words under the Unit Shift hypothesis)