Chad Brady

Mobile Engineering Leader

Mobile engineering leader with 13+ years building iOS and cross-platform apps that people actually use — at scale, with care, and in close partnership with product and design. Pioneer of systematic AI-assisted development workflows, known for building accurate mental models of complex systems that unstick problems teams have been circling for weeks. Operates at the seam of engineering, product, and design: comfortable shaping what gets built, not just how. Thrives in fast-feedback environments where engineering has a real seat at the table.

→ See my systematic AI-assisted development workflow

Core focus iOS & cross-platform architecture · AI-assisted workflow design · systematic AI adoption · release reliability

Primary domain expertise iOS (Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit), Flutter, cross-platform architecture — with staff-level leadership across product and design teams

Snapshot

13+ years building production mobile software — iOS native expertise with strong cross-platform skills (Flutter, React Native)
Early adopter and internal champion of AI-assisted development — authored instruction files and systematic workflows adopted org-wide
Architecture leadership in both regulated (healthcare) and high-velocity (media/consumer) environments
Track record of improving CI/CD, release safety, and cross-functional developer velocity

Engineering Approach

Design for change

Feature-first modular boundaries and architecture guardrails that keep feature work moving without accumulating fragile coupling.

Ship safely, iterate quickly

I invest in delivery systems — CI/CD, staged rollouts, monitoring — so teams can move fast without breaking user trust.

Bridge product & design

I work best when engineering collaborates early across disciplines, turning ambiguity into clear API contracts and maintainable implementations.

Hands-on IC track

I prefer staying deeply technical and owning outcomes end-to-end rather than moving into people management.

Experience

Inspire Medical Systems

Senior Software Engineer · July 2024 – Present

Contributed to architecture of a new Flutter app to replace legacy native iOS and Android apps, establishing a Feature-First folder structure, MVVM pattern, and a shared common package used across regulated and non-regulated modules.
Built the networking library from scratch in Dart, wrapping Flutter's http package with centralized logic and full replaceability — eliminating third-party dependency risk across the entire codebase.
Built native background upload functionality for both iOS and Android using Flutter MethodChannels and EventChannels, enabling reliable large-file transmission in a regulated medical environment.
Established the mobile analytics strategy using Amplitude, defining event taxonomy from scratch and creating a reusable wrapper SDK adopted by the full team.
Pioneered systematic GitHub Copilot adoption: first engineer on team, presented findings org-wide, and authored instruction files that measurably improved AI-generated code quality across all engineers who adopted them. Developed a structured 5-phase workflow (Frame → Explore → Structure → Implement → Harden) for AI-augmented development now used beyond the organization. See full workflow →
Designed a "Document as Code" approach using per-feature READMEs aggregated via script into Software Design Documents for QMS submission, significantly reducing documentation overhead for the entire team.
Diagnosed and resolved a long-standing UI bug that had blocked three engineers for two weeks: traced the root cause to an async nav bar restoration call being released during view controller pop, restoring the interaction in two days.

Surest / Optum

Lead Software Engineer · March 2023 – July 2024

Led cross-platform app redesign for iOS, Android, and Web using React Native, coordinating a distributed team including engineers based in Bulgaria.
Drove design system alignment between engineering and UX — standardized color tokens, spacing, and component naming so engineers could directly reference Figma token names (e.g. text-on-primary-background) in code, reducing implementation errors and rework.
Reduced CI/CD build times by 30% by parallelizing unit tests, iOS builds, and Android builds as independent workflows.

Gravie

Lead Mobile Engineer · August 2022 – January 2023

Led mobile development for a greenfield iOS and Android app with a hard January 1st launch deadline, joining 4 months before ship with a newly assembled and partially turned-over team.
Drove SwiftUI architecture using unidirectional data flow, mentored engineers through weekly 1:1s, and shipped a functioning app on deadline.

BuzzFeed

Staff Software Engineer · Jan 2021 – Aug 2022

Senior Software Engineer · Jun 2017 – Jan 2021

Software Engineer · Jan 2015 – Jun 2017

Led a cross-functional commerce team (iOS, Android, design, product) through a full redesign of the shopping tab, including feed personalization powered by a recommendation engine — collaborating on API contracts and surfacing user interaction data to the data team.
Shaped mobile UX direction alongside Product and Design: proposed breaking a home screen survey into bite-sized card-based interactions, improving completion rates and user experience on mobile.
Architected and built a bookmarks micro-service in Python/MySQL to replace a legacy mono-repo service, designing the API to support both legacy app versions and new scalable bookmark types.
Introduced MVVM architecture to the iOS team via a quiz content refactor, establishing the standard for future iOS development across the codebase.
Built dynamic ad insertion for the iOS app in partnership with Ad Tech, integrating with Google Ads and triggering based on user interaction patterns.
Implemented a Go proxy to map internal API calls to a third-party vendor, unblocking another team's integration without requiring vendor-side changes.
Built multi-GIF playback before common framework support existed: downloading MP4s and decomposing them frame-by-frame for smooth image sequence playback on iOS.
Contributed to iOS codebase migration from Objective-C to Swift and helped build the BuzzFeed News app from Swift 1.1.

Hyper-IQ / WoodApps

Software Engineer · September 2012 – January 2015

Built custom iOS (Objective-C) and Android (Java) apps for clients, from requirements gathering through delivery, specializing in trade show and enterprise mobile experiences.

Selected Work

Flutter App Architecture (Inspire)

Designed a Feature-First MVVM architecture for a regulated Flutter app replacing legacy native iOS/Android, including a shared common package and a custom networking library.

Shopping Tab Personalization (BuzzFeed)

Led a cross-functional redesign of the shopping tab with recommendation-powered feed personalization — collaborating on API contracts and surfacing interaction data to the data team.

CI/CD Acceleration (Surest)

Parallelized iOS, Android, and unit test workflows as independent pipelines, reducing build times by ~30% in production delivery.

Bookmarks Micro-service (BuzzFeed)

Replaced a legacy mono-repo service with a Python/MySQL micro-service, designing the API to support legacy app versions and new scalable bookmark types.

GitHub Copilot Org Rollout (Inspire)

First on the team to adopt GitHub Copilot — presented findings org-wide and authored instruction files that measurably improved AI-generated code quality across the team.

Amplitude Analytics SDK (Inspire)

Defined event taxonomy from scratch and built a reusable wrapper SDK adopted by the full team, establishing the org's analytics strategy for a regulated mobile platform.

Skills

Languages

Swift Dart (Flutter) Kotlin Python JavaScript / TypeScript Objective-C Java Go

Platforms & Frameworks

iOS (UIKit, SwiftUI) Android Flutter React Native MVVM BFF (Backend for Frontend)

Tooling & Practices

CI/CD Bitrise CircleCI Azure Pipelines GitHub Actions Amplitude Analytics REST API Design Micro-services Feature-First Architecture

AI & Data

GitHub Copilot Recommendation System Integration AI-assisted Workflow Design

Leadership

Technical Direction Architecture Design Cross-functional Collaboration Mentorship Distributed Team Leadership

Certifications

Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I)

Education

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science

University of Minnesota, 2013

About

My career has been centered on mobile platforms — iOS natively, with strong cross-platform expertise in Flutter and React Native — but much of my impact comes from broader engineering leadership: systematizing AI-assisted development, defining architecture, shipping reliable delivery systems, and bridging product and design teams.

I've worked across regulated healthcare environments and high-velocity consumer media, and I'm experienced building with and advocating for AI-assisted development workflows — including roles as an AI enablement engineer within my teams.

I prefer staying on a high-impact individual contributor track, owning outcomes end-to-end in environments that value product ownership and engineering autonomy.