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Lead iOS Engineer

Lancaster, UK (in office, hybrid)

full time

hybrid

Salary£80,000 - £90,000

Bonus and share options

About the Role

As Lead iOS Engineer, you’ll be responsible for the technical direction and day-to-day evolution of our iOS codebase, including both our customer-facing app and shared SDK components.

This is a hands-on role in a deep-tech environment where close collaboration matters. Much of the work involves access to our device lab and science lab, and working directly with scientists and engineers developing the underlying optical recognition technology. For that reason, the role is primarily onsite and requires a minimum of two days per week (ideally four) in our Lancaster University office.

You’ll work closely with science, platform, and product teams to turn complex, real-world constraints into reliable iOS software that’s deployed globally to combat counterfeiting in regulated environments. The role also includes leading and growing a small iOS team (a mix of permanent and contract engineers) and working with the Head of Software on technical direction, delivery, and hiring.

What you’ll be doing

• Designing, building, and maintaining iOS applications and SDKs in Swift

• Owning public APIs and ensuring stability for downstream users

• Working across app lifecycle, performance, and device-specific behaviour

• Collaborating with science and backend teams to integrate new capabilities

• Leading technical decisions, code reviews, and mentoring within the iOS team

• Improving developer experience through tooling, automation, and clearer workflows

Key experience (required)

• Strong iOS engineering experience (5+ years) building and shipping production-quality software in Swift.
• Experience owning and maintaining an iOS SDK or shared library, including:
  • Versioning and backward compatibility
  • Public API design and documentation
  • Supporting downstream customers or internal teams
• Solid understanding of modern iOS architecture, including SwiftUI and interoperability with existing UIKit codebases.
• Experience working close to the platform, such as:
  • Camera APIs (AVFoundation)
  • System frameworks and performance-sensitive code
• Comfort debugging complex, real-world issues across app lifecycle, threading, memory, and device-specific behaviour.
• Experience working in small teams or startup environments, where requirements evolve and ownership matters.
• Ability to reason clearly about trade-offs (correctness vs performance, API stability vs iteration speed).

Nice to have experience

• Computer vision or image processing experience using Apple frameworks such as Vision or CoreImage.
• Experience with on-device ML (e.g. CoreML, model integration, performance constraints).
• Background in science, engineering, or applied ML, especially in image- or signal-heavy domains.
• Experience bridging native iOS code into cross-platform systems or SDKs, rather than building entire apps in a specific framework.
• Familiarity with Android or other platforms, helpful but not required.
• Experience working on regulated or standards-driven products where correctness and reproducibility matter.

If you are a driven and ambitious professional ready to take your career to the next level, we want to hear from you.