Hi, I’m Jake. I’m a 29 year-old freelance Swift/iOS developer & UI/UX designer living and working in Sacramento, CA.
Designing honest, clean, effortless solutions.
Work Highlights
OCCI Outfit Creation
This is OCCI, a fashion app in which you can create your own outfit moodboards on a canvas for saving + sharing. Here you can see the user manage layers to delete items, browse the inventory to select new items, and use multi-touch gestures to move and scale the items freely within the canvas bounds.
Client
OCCI
Role
iOS Developer + Designer
Follk Sight Creation
This is part of the creation flow for making a new Sight in Follk. It showcases fluid animations + transitions, custom image gestures + carousel, rich link processing, and custom font and color theme controls to help the user express themselves.
Client
Follk (me)
Role
iOS Developer + Designer
Follk Like Animation
A custom, Metal-based burst animation I designed for liking AT Protocol (Bluesky) posts in Follk, with a touch of bounciness for levity of course.
Sometimes it’s the small delights that matter.
Client
Follk (me)
Role
iOS Developer + Designer
Magic Video Grid + Player
This is my custom video grid + paging video player that I built for Magic, a more mindful short-form video platform. It has everything you expect it to: snapping scroll gestures, scrub bar at the bottom, swipe to dismiss gestures,
Client
Magic by Madvision
Role
iOS Developer
iOS Messages Photo Stack
Here is a pretty faithful re-creation of the UI component from the Apple Messages app for sending a collection of photos to a friend. The deck of cards style UI is continuously responsive to your gestures with a playful bounciness.
Client
me
Role
iOS Developer
About
I’m currently working freelance, primarily as an iOS developer, but I also develop backend services (in Swift) and offer UI/UX design services. This positions me for certain clients to own the whole product release cycle: from design to prototype to app to backend services. For some clients I do one, for some I do all. I’m always learning, building, trying new things :)
As both a designer and software developer, I know I’m at a uniquely potent intersection in the field of technology. I will never cease to be amazed at the breadth of problems that software and design can create solutions for, ever iterating to better deal with today’s problems. However, in these days of AI, we are in an era of change – for better and worse. We have new tools & technology which let us increasingly ask ourselves again “What problems can we solve?” and “What problems can we solve differently?” I love to ask those questions, to think deeply and iterate on the answers, to dream “How can we be better?”
Great product design lies at the intersection of utility, usability, & aesthetic delight: “does it solve a problem for me?”, “is it easy and intuitive to use?”, “does it make me smile?” All of these questions (and your answers to them) culminate in the end product experience of the user, how they feel when they use it. That level of delight can only be attained through a tight integration between engineering + design.
Are you building something cool, or different? Does it help people? Do you have a hard problem you need help solving? Reach out.
PROJECTS
OCCI (outfit designer + fashion marketplace) — rebuilt the iOS app from the ground up, redesigned the full UI/UX in Figma from the founder's rough drafts, and shipped a companion macOS admin app for internal content management. Also replaced their Python backend with a Swift/Vapor service, owning the API contract on both sides. App Store
Gloss Studio (photo + video editor, iOS + iPadOS) — build features for and maintain a production app built on The Composable Architecture (TCA), including work across its Metal-backed image pipeline. App Store
Follk (geocaching meets social, iOS) — Follk is my own project that I’ve worked on over the years off and on. It’s a location-based social platform intended to make social experiences more physically present through expressive posts that exist and can only be opened at a specific location. I’ve created the brand, design system, iOS app, and backend services using Figma and Swift. I’ve recently reworked the product to interoperate with the AT Protocol, making it a full Bluesky client in addition to its own location-based social features. I also build and operate the Swift/Vapor backend, made with PostgreSQL, Redis caching, Prometheus and Grafana observability, and a macOS admin app, maintaining the whole system solo through deployment and production debugging. It’s functional, but I’m always making changes. Reach out if you’d like a link to the TestFlight beta.
Abyss (journaling, iOS + watchOS) — privacy-focused journaling app structured as a text thread with yourself, with conversational AI layered on top and journal content kept on device in SQLite. Built hybrid tool calling across the client/server boundary: client-side recall over local data, server-side web search via a Swift backend I built that proxies to Anthropic's API and streams over SSE. Also a live voice mode with transcription, a Live Activity for audio recording, and a companion Watch app.
Bento (macOS window manager) — contributed UI implementation, animation, and interaction design as part of a small team. Website
Sage (native cross-platform chat client) — built UI and streaming response rendering for a native alternative to the ChatGPT and Claude apps. Website
Magic (short-form video) — built a mindfulness-oriented alternative to TikTok featuring user-selectable feed algorithms, comments, profiles, and a custom repeatable "boost" gesture. Completed and functional; closed after the founders pivoted. Videos available on request.
Verse (screen time) — built an app for competing with friends to reduce screen time on chosen categories. Completed; closed after the founders pivoted.
Mission MFG Security (security system) — built a security system end-to-end (sensors, Raspberry Pi server, iOS client for arming/disarming and break-in alerts); redesigned the company's logo, website, and packaging.
Older Designs:
Rodin — an old student project of mine, but an emotionally compelling experience nonetheless. Tells a quasi-narrative through some of Rodin’s sculptures and writings. Desktop & Mobile Web Design + Case Study
Mission MFG — Responsive Logo
Titan Wake — Responsive Logo
SKILLS
Apple Platforms: Swift 6.2, SwiftUI, UIKit, watchOS, Swift Concurrency (async/await, actors, Sendable, TaskGroups), Observation / @Observable, MV + MVVM + TCA
Frameworks: AVFoundation, Core Location, MapKit, Metal, Core Image, CloudKit, ARKit / RealityKit, ActivityKit, WidgetKit, CoreHaptics, UserNotifications, TipKit, WebKit, Combine
Data & Persistence: SQLite (GRDB / Point-Free SQLiteData), UserDefaults, JSON stores
AI Integration: Streaming LLM responses over SSE, tool calling across client and server boundaries, voice interaction and transcription
Agentic Development: Codex + Claude Code, custom skills + agent files
Design: Figma, brand and UI/UX design, design systems, motion and interaction design
Backend: Vapor, Fluent, PostgreSQL, Redis, REST API design, JWT auth, Sign in with Apple, App Attest, Docker, Prometheus + Grafana, Digital Ocean, AWS S3
Testing & Delivery: Swift Testing, XCTest, Xcode Cloud, TestFlight, App Store submission, Instruments, Thread Sanitizer
On The Side
I also adore synthesizers, pianos, guitars, drums, and musical instruments in general. Many moons ago I released some ambient tracks as me and the earth if you want to check it out. I also really like specialty coffee, plants, and video games.