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 ¶
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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).
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)