Ermal Bujupaj · Senior iOS Developer
Building beautiful, scalable mobile experiences.
I design and ship iOS apps end to end — from architecture and tooling to the last pixel of the UX. Currently exploring AI, product engineering and developer experience.
About
Engineer first, product-minded always.
I'm Ermal — an iOS engineer who has spent the better part of a decade shipping apps that people rely on every day. I've built products across consumer and enterprise domains, and I care as much about the architecture behind a feature as the feel of it under a thumb.
My engineering philosophy is simple: software should be a joy to use and a joy to maintain. That means modular architecture, honest tests, boring technology where boring is right — and relentless attention to the details users feel but never name.
Right now I'm going deep on AI-assisted products and developer experience. Long-term, I want to keep building things end to end — the engineering, the product thinking, and the polish that makes them memorable.
Architecture is a product decision
How code is structured decides how fast a product can evolve. I design for the change that's coming, not just the feature that's due.
Polish is not optional
Animation timing, haptics, empty states, error copy — the last 5% is what users remember. I budget for it from day one.
Simple over clever
The best code review comment is “this was easy to read.” Cleverness ages badly; clarity compounds.
Always learning
New platforms, new tools, adjacent disciplines — staying curious is the job. This site is itself a lab for that.
Tools I reach for
- Swift
- SwiftUI
- UIKit
- Objective-C
- Swift Concurrency
- Combine
- WidgetKit
- HealthKit
- MapKit
- AVFoundation
- Firebase
- GraphQL
- REST APIs
- MVVM
- Clean Architecture
- Modularization
- XCTest
- Fastlane
- GitHub Actions
- CI/CD
Skills
A toolkit built deliberately.
Filter by area, pick a skill, and see how deep it goes — years of hands-on use, an honest confidence level, and where it shipped.
Language & UI
Swift
My primary language since Swift 3. Deep with generics, protocol-oriented design, result builders and the evolution process — I read release notes for fun.
Used in
- ÖAMTC
- HEUTE
- oe24
- sYn
Experience
Nine years, from QA to senior iOS engineering.
Full-time product work on apps used across Austria, a freelance practice serving clients in Kosovo and Europe — and a first year in QA that still shapes how I ship.
- Full-time
Senior iOS Developer
OpenResearch GmbH · Prishtina, Kosovo · Austrian company
Jun 2018 — Present · 8 yrs 2 mos
Core iOS engineer on OpenResearch's Austrian consumer portfolio — ÖAMTC, the app of Austria's largest mobility club, the high-reach news apps HEUTE and oe24, and the ÖAMTC Reise travel app. I take features from product requirement to App Store release, and stay with them after launch: monitoring, user feedback, updates.
What I do
- Design and build features across four production apps with Swift, SwiftUI and UIKit — dropping into Objective-C where legacy modules demand it.
- Turn product and design requirements into interfaces that hold up to Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, working directly with UI/UX designers.
- Integrate backend APIs and services in close collaboration with backend engineers.
- Write unit and UI tests, debug crashes and performance regressions, and keep every app compatible across iPhone and iPad models and iOS versions.
- Own the release pipeline: certificates, provisioning profiles, code signing and App Store submission.
- Monitor performance and user feedback after release; participate in planning, code reviews and pre-release coordination with QA.
Apps I worked on
- ÖAMTC — app of Austria's largest mobility club — membership, breakdown assistance and services
- HEUTE — mobile app of one of Austria's highest-reach daily news brands
- oe24 — news and video app of the oe24 / Österreich media group
- ÖAMTC Reise — the mobility club's travel companion app
Highlights
- Ship and maintain four high-traffic consumer apps serving audiences across Austria.
Technologies
- Swift
- Objective-C
- SwiftUI
- UIKit
- REST APIs
- XCTest
- App Store Connect
- Code signing
- Freelance
Freelance iOS Developer
Independent clients · Kosovo & Europe · remote
Jul 2020 — Present · 6 yrs 1 mo
A freelance practice running alongside full-time work since 2020: complete iOS apps for clients in Kosovo and across Europe, delivered end to end. On a freelance project there is nobody to hand things to — scoping, architecture, implementation and the App Store release are all mine.
What I do
- Scope, estimate and deliver iOS apps as the sole mobile engineer on each project.
- Design the architecture and make pragmatic build-vs-buy decisions that keep small budgets shippable.
- Integrate client backends and third-party services — from security-system APIs to crypto payout flows.
- Run App Store releases and post-launch maintenance for non-technical clients.
Apps I worked on
- DeltaConnect — companion app for a Kosovar home-security company
- Ritech — client app for a Swiss printing company
- sYn — short-video social app where creators earn crypto based on the views their videos collect
Highlights
- Three client apps shipped end to end as the only iOS engineer on the project.
Technologies
- Swift
- SwiftUI
- UIKit
- Firebase
- REST APIs
- Push notifications
- App Store Connect
- Full-time
QA Engineer & Data Entry
StarLabs LLC · Prishtina, Kosovo
Jun 2017 — May 2018 · 1 yr
First industry role: quality assurance and data operations for UberMedia's products. A year spent breaking other people's software taught me exactly how much discipline it takes to ship software that doesn't break — a lesson that still shapes how I write and test code today.
What I did
- Tested UberMedia's applications: manual and regression passes, with bug reports engineers could act on immediately.
- Maintained and enriched geolocation data in the UberMedia platform.
- Verified fixes and releases before they shipped.
Technologies
- Manual QA
- Regression testing
- Bug tracking
- Geodata tooling
Projects
Built end to end, written up honestly.
Selected work with full case studies — the problem, the architecture, the challenges that made it interesting, and what each project taught me.