Engineering Lead
Khaled led the engineering effort for a privacy-first lifestyle application that unified native Apple services like Journal, Health, Photos, and Location into a single cohesive experience. The project required shipping a minimum viable product across all seven Apple platforms (iOS, macOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, CarPlay, and visionOS), maintaining Apple-level user experience quality throughout. All data processing happened on-device using CoreML models, ensuring complete user privacy.
Why I Joined
Opportunity to demonstrate full Apple ecosystem mastery and work on a cutting-edge privacy-first application
- •Architected technical solutions across all 7 Apple platforms, ensuring appropriate user experience for each form factor from watchOS to visionOS
- •Selected and evaluated technology stack and third-party libraries, reviewing privacy policies to ensure compliance with strict data handling requirements
- •Ensured Apple certification compliance across all platforms, navigating private API requirements for Health, Journal, and Photos integration
- •Led the engineering team in a technical leadership capacity, providing architectural guidance rather than hands-on coding
- •Oversaw CoreML model integration, converting external machine learning models to on-device format optimized for each platform's capabilities
- •Optimized cross-platform code sharing while maintaining platform-appropriate interfaces and interactions
- ✓Delivered MVP across all 7 Apple platforms (iOS, macOS, iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, CarPlay, visionOS) within 4 months, establishing one of the few applications with complete Apple ecosystem coverage
- ✓Implemented privacy-first architecture ensuring all user data remained on-device with zero external data transmission, exceeding Apple's own privacy standards
- ✓Successfully integrated CoreML models converted from external formats, enabling intelligent features without compromising user privacy
- ✓Shipped application with Apple-level user experience polish across all screen sizes and interaction modalities, from 40mm watch faces to spatial computing interfaces
Technology Stack
Situation
A startup founder approached Toptal seeking an engineering lead who could deliver a lifestyle app across Apple's entire platform ecosystem. The vision required integrating sensitive Apple services like Health and Journal while maintaining absolute privacy - no data could ever leave the user's devices.
Task
Lead the engineering effort to build and ship an MVP across all 7 Apple platforms, implementing privacy-first architecture with on-device machine learning while maintaining Apple-level user experience quality.
Action
Khaled architected a shared codebase strategy that maximized code reuse while allowing platform-specific adaptations for each form factor. He established strict privacy guidelines requiring all data processing on-device, oversaw the conversion of ML models to CoreML format, and led the team through Apple's certification requirements for accessing private APIs. He personally reviewed all third-party library privacy policies and designed the cross-platform synchronization approach using only Apple's secure on-device frameworks.
Result
The MVP shipped successfully across all 7 platforms within 4 months. The founder used the completed product to pursue Series A investment, with the technical architecture receiving positive feedback for its privacy-first approach and comprehensive platform coverage.
Size: 5 people
Structure: Small startup team with dedicated engineering leadership
Reported to: Founder/CEO
Direct reports: 3
Skills Gained
Skills Deepened
- 💡How to maintain consistent user experience quality across dramatically different form factors and interaction patterns
- 💡Techniques for maximizing code sharing while respecting platform-specific design guidelines
- 💡Strategies for converting and optimizing ML models for on-device inference across different Apple hardware