Vadim Drobinin (last updated: 16 May 2025)

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

Senior iOS Engineer with 15+ years building impactful products acquired by industry leaders like Twitter and recognised by CES, Apple, and Webby Awards. Expert in architecting modern iOS systems (SwiftUI/TCA), implementing OWASP/HIPAA compliance, and medical device connectivity. Pioneering work with AI/ML systems, language models, and MCP frameworks since their early adoption in the 2020s. Proven track record scaling engineering teams from startup to acquisition and driving technical transformations that achieve 99.9%+ crash-free rates.

Experience ¶

• Mobile Engineering Consultant @ Drobinin Limited, remote (2013 – Present)
  • 10+ years delivering commercial iOS apps and leading distributed teams for global clients; Apple WWDC Scholar.
  • Fractional Head of Engineering for ventures: built high-performance teams, scaled ops; led fitness app's mobile dev to acquisition via USA/UAE expansion.
  • Pioneering implementation of AI agents, MCP frameworks, and language model integrations in production iOS apps since early 2020s adoption.
  • 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.
• 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, achieving a 99.9% crash-free rate.
  • 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; automated release/testing pipelines & performed OWASP MASVS security audits (>70% compliance).
  • Launched standalone watchOS app, driving 7% adoption uplift for key features.
  • Designed iOS hiring & onboarding framework, adopted company-wide; key interviewer for team growth.
• 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%.
  • Automated code reviews, accelerating PR throughput 70%; migrated client networking to Protobuf, cutting traffic 35%.
  • Architected an in-app chat ad platform, driving a 200% CTR lift.
• 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 35%.
• 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 Higher School of Economics
  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)