Chris Rivers

Chris Rivers iOS Engineer · AI · AR · IoT · Audio

I build products end-to-end — from AR navigation systems to AI health apps to the synths I make for fun.

10+ years shipping consumer software as both a founding engineer and a team lead. Currently building a pre-seed AI performance app as sole mobile engineer; previously built and ran the mobile team behind a venture-backed AR navigation platform.

Email me See the work ↓ Download CV ↗

About

A bit about me

I'm an iOS engineer based in Bristol, UK, with 10+ years shipping consumer software — from an entry-level content role at Future Plc through advanced mobile developer at Dyson, to founding engineer and mobile lead roles building AR and AI, wearable and health products from scratch. I care as much about the team around the code as the code itself: I've built CI/CD pipelines and TDD cultures from zero, and hired and grown engineering teams from a single developer into full cross-functional orgs. Outside client work, I have designed and built my own iOS music apps under Lofionic, and studied Music Technology at university — a lifelong passion of mine.

Featured Work

Products I've built, mostly from scratch

A mix of hands-on builds and team-led delivery — the through-line is owning a product from early concept to something real people use.

Founding iOS Engineer · 2025–Present

Pinnacle Intelligence

Pre-seed AI performance & wellbeing app

Sole mobile engineer on a pre-seed startup building an AI-driven performance and wellbeing app — taking it from a barebones prototype to a fully-fledged, multi-faceted product spanning wearables, computer vision and generative AI.

  • Real-time connectivity with a third-party wearable for continuous heart rate and activity monitoring.
  • An AI chat interface supporting real-time voice-to-voice conversation alongside typed messaging.
  • HealthKit integration to sync sleep, activity and biometric data with Apple Health.
  • A computer vision pipeline measuring biometrics — including Heart Rate Variability and focus — directly from camera input.
  • A reusable visualisation framework for guided performance exercises: breathwork, meditation, microbreaks.
  • A gamified home screen with activities and performance charts, plus a CI/CD pipeline with AI-assisted code review.
SwiftUICombineMetalRealityKitAVFoundationCoreBluetoothHealthKit
Top 5Product Hunt, Product of the Day

App screens — click any thumbnail to expand

Hyper (formerly Dent Reality) logo
Founding iOS Engineer → Mobile Lead · 2021–2024

Hyper (formerly Dent Reality)

AR indoor-navigation platform

Hired as founding engineer to build the mobile team from scratch. Led development of the "Floating Arrow" — a state-of-the-art AR navigation system that became the company's signature feature — and grew the org from a single developer into a multi-team engineering culture.

  • Delivered foundational technical work that helped secure the company's $3.4M seed round, ahead of later developing the more advanced Floating Arrow system.
  • Delivered commercial pilots and trials with major retailers including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, IKEA, Target and Home Depot — from flagship in-store navigation apps to SDK integrations — working directly with client engineering and product teams, including periods on-site.
  • Grew and led a team of 6 mobile engineers; owned hiring, technical assessment, and delivery planning with product owners.
  • Built the CI/CD pipeline from scratch and established a Test-Driven Development culture across the team.
  • Product demos regularly generated hundreds of thousands of views on social media — one clip alone passed 7 million views.
SwiftUICombineRealityKitSceneKitCoreLocation
$3.4MSeed round secured
1 → 6Engineering team grown
7MViews on a single demo video

Hyper's state-of-the-art AR indoor navigation

Lofionic app UI screenshots — LF1 Monosynth, Duplicat, Mani
Independent · Ongoing

Lofionic

Self-published iOS music apps

A personal line of iOS music apps, designed and built entirely solo — including the DSP audio engines. Three shipped products built on proprietary analogue-modelling engines.

  • LF1 Monosynth — an iOS analogue-modelling synthesiser.
  • Duplicat — a tape-delay effect plugin.
  • Mani — a chorus effect plugin.
Core AudioCore MIDIAudiobusInter-App AudioAudioUnit ExtensionsSwiftObjective-CC++C

Press & reviews

LF1 Monosynth
Duplicat Tape Delay
Mani Analogue Chorus

Also Worked On

Other experience

Contributing as part of larger engineering teams, before founding-engineer roles at Hyper and Pinnacle.

Dyson logo
Mobile Applications Developer (iOS) · 2017–2021

Dyson

Dyson Link — IoT companion app

Joined the connected-products team building Dyson Link, the IoT companion app connecting air purifiers, lighting and robot vacuums to a category-wide platform used by millions.

  • Built connectivity features for Dyson Link across the company's full range of connected products — air purifiers, lighting, robot vacuums and wearables — via Bluetooth, MQTT and HTTP, and contributed to REST API contract design.
  • Led iOS implementation of the LiDAR-based home-zoning feature for the robot vacuum cleaner, using spatial mapping to segment and target-clean individual rooms.
  • Developed live visualisation of real-time air quality metrics from air purifiers and the Dyson Zone wearable air-purifying face mask.
  • Led hackday projects that introduced AR and voice-control features to the app, both later shipped as production features.
  • Contributed to the launch of Dyson Link version 3, a major relaunch of the app, helping grow the platform to 1 million connected users.
  • Worked in a 90% Swift codebase using RxSwift and MVVM, maintaining disciplined TDD across unit and XCUI test suites.
  • Mentored junior and graduate engineers within a category-wide Agile team.
SwiftUIKitRxSwiftRabbitMQ
1MConnected users on Dyson Link
v3Major app relaunch shipped
Junior iOS Dev → Android Dev → Software Engineer · 2013–2017

Future Plc

FutureFolio — enterprise publishing platform

Four years at Future Plc — starting as a Digital Production Assistant coordinating content for its iOS and Kindle apps, then moving into Junior iOS Developer, Android Developer and finally a cross-platform Software Engineer role. The entry point into a development career.

  • Started in a content curation and QA role — coordinating content from editorial teams for the app and Kindle portfolio, chasing submissions, fixing formatting issues, converting files, uploading to the CMS, and testing releases ahead of launch.
  • Developed native macOS tools to expedite content delivery, which led directly to the move into development.
  • Built features on the FutureFolio platform, first on iOS and then bringing Android into alignment, working directly with enterprise clients including UBS.
  • Delivered revenue-critical iOS features generating £20k+ in additional monthly turnover.
  • Diagnosed and resolved memory and crash issues using Instruments, cutting crash reports by 95%.
Objective-CSwiftJava.NET / C#
95%Reduction in crash reports
£20k+Added monthly revenue

Skills

Technical range

Languages & UI

SwiftSwiftUIUIKitObjective-CC++C

AR / Graphics / Media

RealityKitSceneKitMetalAVFoundationCore AudioCore MIDI

Systems & Infra

CombineCoreLocationCoreBluetoothCoreDataHealthKitRxSwiftRabbitMQCI/CDTDD

Let's talk

Open to conversations about mobile engineering leadership, founding engineer roles, or anything AI / AR / IoT / Audio.

chris@lofionic.co.uk LinkedIn ↗