Senior iOS Engineer (Real-Time Messaging)

About Us:

We are a Dubai-based technology company that designs and builds mobile applications across several categories — business applications, news applications, and social media applications — for users across the GCC. We work with an automation-first, security-first, quality-first mindset and are growing a senior mobile team.

About the Role:

This role focuses on the real-time side of our products: instant messaging and chat, live feeds and breaking-news updates, presence, notifications, and in-app communication that must feel instant and never lose data. You will own the real-time layer of our iOS apps end-to-end — architecture, persistent connections, offline sync, notifications, and performance — and apply it across our business, news, and social products.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and build high-performance iOS apps in Swift / SwiftUI (UIKit where needed).
• Build the real-time layer: persistent WebSocket / XMPP connections, reconnects and heartbeats, message ordering, delivery and read receipts, typing and presence, live feed updates.
• Build offline-first storage and sync (Core Data / SwiftData / GRDB) with queued sending and conflict handling.
• Deliver reliable notifications with APNs and Notification Service Extensions; PushKit + CallKit for calls.
• Handle media: chunked upload/download, image/video compression, voice notes.
• Keep apps fast and stable: Instruments profiling, memory and battery tuning, crash-free rate above 99.5%.
• Apply security best practices: Keychain, certificate pinning, end-to-end encryption support.
• Work with backend engineers on protocol design, and with Android and QA on feature parity.
• Own App Store releases, CI/CD, and code reviews.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional iOS development, with production apps live on the App Store.
• Hands-on experience building real-time features: an instant messaging / chat app is strongly preferred; live feeds, social or live-update apps also considered.
• Expert in Swift, Swift Concurrency, SwiftUI, and UIKit.
• Working knowledge of XMPP (e.g., XMPPFramework, MAM, stream management) or an equivalent real-time protocol (WebSocket, MQTT).
• Strong background in offline-first data, background execution, and push notifications.
• Clean architecture (MVVM / TCA / VIPER), unit and UI testing, Git.

Nice to Have:

• Understanding of messaging backends such as ejabberd / MongooseIM (Erlang) — no Erlang coding required.
• End-to-end encryption (Signal protocol), WebRTC voice/video calls.
• Experience with news or social media apps; Arabic / RTL UI; Kotlin or Flutter exposure.

What We Offer:

• Competitive package based on experience, plus UAE employment visa.
• Ownership of the real-time layer across multiple live products, with a senior team.

#J-18808-Ljbffr