Hi, I’m Rakesh.
iOS & AI Engineer in Dallas, TX
I build native apps end to end: architecture, payments, release pipelines, and the on-device ML and agents on top.
Senior iOSAI engineeringFounding engineer
Open to senior iOS & AI roles · available now
Rakesh Varma Nadakudhiti
iOS & AI Engineer · Dallas, TX
Native apps, games and on-device intelligence.
Ex-Apple, ex-Spirit Airlines. Now leading mobile for a four-brand travel-tech group and shipping my own apps with SwiftUI, Foundation Models and agentic AI. Three live on the App Store, one in development.
Pitch Pulse 26 / Live Activity
View on the App Store ↗
Pitch Pulse 26
- A Lock Screen-first companion for the 2026 football tournament.
- Live Activities push score and momentum in real time, with Dynamic Island states and Home Screen widgets.
- 104 fixtures and 16 host-city guides. Cloudflare Workers and APNs at the edge, zero tracking, $0 a month to run.
MedBill Companion / Agent
In development
MedBill Companion
- An agentic AI that reads medical bills, flags overcharges and drafts appeals.
- Runs on-device with Foundation Models, so health information stays on the phone.
Snap / Quiz Battles
View on the App Store ↗
Snap: Quiz Battles
- A fast, social trivia game with real-time quiz battles.
- Snappy SwiftUI animation, streaks and a tuned matchmaking loop.
- Built and shipped solo, with a sub-second cold start.
Grid Glide / Word Puzzle
View on the App Store ↗
Grid Glide
- A calm, tactile word puzzle with a glide-to-connect mechanic.
- Cross-platform in Flutter, shipped to the App Store.
- Firebase Analytics, Crashlytics and FCM, released through Fastlane CI.
Checkfront / Tap to Pay
View on the App Store ↗
Tap to Pay for tour operators
- Designed a shared payments SDK for four travel brands: a native Stripe Terminal core with a React Native binding.
- Shipped Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android with live production transactions and no card-reader hardware.
- Built the backend with Claude Code and Codex: server-side pricing, fund routing and per-customer feature flags.
The screen is an illustration, not a capture of the app.
Spirit / Ramp Central
Internal app, illustrated
One app for the ramp, the gate and check-in
- Led Ramp Central from the ground up, coordinating agents, ground crew and baggage across 500+ daily flights.
- Trained a Core ML model that checks baggage loads against sprinkler clearance in cargo holds. It replaced a vendor and saves about $1M a year.
- Offline-first sync with conflict resolution for low-connectivity ramp and gate areas.
The screen is an illustration. The app is internal.
Spirit / Kiosk Check-In
Internal app, illustrated
A native iPad kiosk
- Replaced the vendor check-in stack with a native iOS kiosk, from exploration through proof of concept to production.
- Drove thermal printers over TCP with no first-party iOS SDK.
- One adaptive SwiftUI layer across kiosk hardware. Presented the proof of concept to Apple.
The screen is an illustration. The app is internal.
Apple / Wallet & Apple Pay
Illustrated
Payments at Apple
- Built transaction flows in Apple Retail’s point-of-sale app (EasyPay), used in 500+ stores, and led its move from Objective-C to Swift.
- Implemented device and payment tokenization flows that replace the card number with a Device Account Number held in the Secure Element.
- Built Tap to Pay on iPhone acceptance flows with ProximityReader.
The screen is an illustration, not Apple's interface.
- Apple Pay & WalletTokenization, PassKit, Secure Element
- Tap to Pay on iPhoneProximityReader, shipped at three companies
- Core MLA custom model in production at an airline
- Live ActivitiesActivityKit, WidgetKit, APNs
- Agentic AIOn-device Foundation Models, agent tooling
- Release engineeringCode signing, CI/CD, phased rollout
6 of 6 tests passed
500+Apple Stores running the POS I moved to Swift
~$1Msaved a year by a Core ML baggage model
3solo apps live on the App Store
85%test coverage at Apple
4Spirit Airlines apps shipped
9+years shipping native iOS
Lead Mobile EngineerExpedition Software Holding · Jul 2026 to now
Sole mobile engineer and architect for Checkfront, Regiondo, Rezdy and Manifest. Shipped Tap to Pay on iPhone and Android with live production transactions.
Senior iOS DeveloperSpirit Airlines · Sep 2024 to May 2026
Shipped 4 production apps serving millions of guests. Built an on-device Core ML model that replaced a vendor and saves about $1M a year. Owned booking, check-in and Apple Pay flows end to end.
Senior iOS EngineerApple Retail · Aug 2019 to Aug 2024
Built transaction flows in Apple Retail’s point of sale (EasyPay), used in 500+ stores. Led its Objective-C to Swift VIPER migration, made launch 30% faster and reached 85% test coverage.
Validated by Micro1 · Senior iOS Developer. View certification ↗
LanguagesSwift · SwiftUI · Objective-C · Kotlin · React Native · Dart / Flutter
AI / MLFoundation Models · Core ML · Agentic systems · On-device inference
FrameworksVIPER · Combine · Live Activities · WidgetKit · Apple Pay
Backend / InfraCloudflare Workers · APNs · XCTest · TestFlight
Contact
Let’s build something native.
Open to senior iOS, AI engineering, and founding-engineer roles. Email gets the fastest reply.
- devrakeshv@gmail.com
- GitHub
- github.com/rkshvrma ↗
© 2026 Rakesh Varma Nadakudhiti · Built native · Dallas, TX · Privacy ↗
50 passages from my resume, grouped by topic. A question pulls the 12 closest in meaning.