iOS Team Lead

iOS Team Lead for Calm, a startup building a secure corporate messenger on Matrix. Remote with flexible schedule (MSK 10–19). Salary $3,500–$5,500/month. Lead iOS development, team, releases, and architecture.

We are a startup building a secure corporate messenger based on Matrix. Responsibilities: - Manage the team and processes: establish the development cycle, decompose tasks, manage the backlog, and ensure timeline transparency. - Release management: own the release process, CI/CD, crash-free metrics, and fast hotfixes. - Upstream synchronization: define fork strategy, merge upstream, and minimize divergence. - Mentorship and hiring: participate in hiring iOS developers, onboarding, mentoring, code reviews, and raising the quality bar. - Backend interaction: critically read specifications and identify contradictions in API contracts. - Design iOS client architecture (SwiftUI, iOS 17+) and integrate with a Rust core (FFI/Swift Package); you do not need to write Rust, but must understand the boundaries. - Control complex areas: state machines, networking logic (retries, idempotency, cache), WKWebView, and push notifications.

Minimum technical foundation: - 3+ years of commercial iOS development; the project is entirely in SwiftUI (UIKit only selectively). - Strong concurrency skills: async/await, structured concurrency, actor isolation. - Experience building the networking layer manually: pagination, request idempotency, semantic error handling, retries with backoff. - Ability to design and test state machines; unit tests for parsing and transitions are part of the Definition of Done. - Understanding of push infrastructure: Notification Service Extension, extension limitations, and payload parsing. - English B1+ (reading documentation, correspondence). - Team management experience (team lead, mentoring) is the most important aspect. Nice to have: - Experience with Matrix, matrix-rust-sdk, or other E2EE messengers. - Experience maintaining open-source forks and upstream contribution strategies. - Familiarity with XcodeGen, SwiftLint, and CI setup (including self-hosted runners). - Applied cryptography (AES-GCM, keychain, understanding client-side threats). - Experience with AI-assisted development (Claude Code, Cursor) and readiness to implement these processes.

Fully remote work, flexible schedule with asynchronous communication, MSK schedule 10:00–19:00. Salary: from $3,500 to $5,500 (discussed based on interview results). Payments twice a month. Minimum bureaucracy, direct influence on architecture and team formation. Selection process: - HR Screening. - Interview with CEO, CPO, CHRO, Head of Frontend. - Optionally a technical interview with Head of Frontend. - Offer.