- Education: Master in Computing.
- Currently tech lead at Tabcorp, helped build the iOS team and bring the Keno app to market; helped ship a new version of TAB's web casino product (Sunbets Vegas).
- Software engineer since 2007, on a wide range of projects including gaming, several years of mobile (iOS) development and back-end development.
- Built products from the ground up at several startups and my own companies, working closely with product managers, designers and clients.
- Several years of experience doing freelance development work with a wide array of clients, from individual entrepreneurs and startups to helping larger companies out. This work involved finding clients, negotiating rates and often helping with product development and project management, depending on the client's own in-house expertise in those areas. Much of this work was done remotely.
- I'm proficient in several, and familiar with a range of programming languages such as Objective-C, Swift, JavaScript, PHP, Python, CoffeeScript, C++.
- I've built several games both for desktop and mobile
- Worked with and helped direct a remote team building our mobile app for another platform (iOS to Android) at Lumatic.
April 2016 - now Tabcorp
Role: technical team lead for Keno iOS app; technical team lead for Sunbets Casino Vegas (contract)
Helped hire and build the team, and bring the app to market. Worked with external testing agencies to get the app approved by the regulator, and internally with multiple stakeholders across business, product and design in an agile environment.
For Sunbets, helped set technical direction and provide a roadmap for shipping the product, working with product manager and business analyst to develop estimates and break the project roadmap down into phases.
iOS, Swift, ReactiveSwift, ReactiveCocoa, Xcode, nodejs, PHP/Wordpress, team lead, interviewing, agile, ci, testing automation
February 2015 - April 2016 Galibugs.com
Role: producing content, marketing and teaching for Galibugs, online; consulting for mobile and web
My wife Ivana and I started Galibugs in February 2015. We have worked on creating iOS app development courses and promoting them, as well as mobile and web consulting.
Course development and promotion was something entirely new and exciting for me, and I've been enjoying it a lot. Having the knowledge and being able to organize and transfer it to someone else are very different things, so the work has been challenging. Seeing my students progress and achieve their own goals is also incredibly rewarding and makes the effort worthwhile.
iOS, Xcode, Swift, teaching, digital marketing, copywriting, audio and video production, web development
March 2014 - December 2014: Piethis.com
Role: Senior iOS developer, Back-end developer, Singapore
Pie was building a better chat for work. Originally started as a platform for sharing links within a company in a visual way, through several iterations it came to be a more hipchat- or slack-like chat app for teams. Focusing on simplicity and elegant UI, Pie aimed to win users through great user experience.
Things at Pie were changing rapidly, and I built the whole iOS app from scratch two times: first when it was still about sharing links and then after the pivot to a chat app - with several design iterations in between.
The biggest challenge was the asynchronous nature of the app, which differed a lot from a typical REST client that most mobile apps are. Here messages are coming in all the time, they need to be sorted and processed in real-time while keeping in sync with the server, and making sure user experience is smooth and uninterrupted. The app was built for iOS7 and iOS8, and written partly in Swift.
In addition to the iOS app, I also worked on the back-end - both the REST API and other server-side services. The stack was NodeJS + PostgreSQL, all in Coffeescript.
The company was later acquired by Google.
iOS, Xcode, Objective-C, Swift, PostgreSQL, NodeJS, Coffeescript, Javascript, chat, real-time communication
Role: Senior iOS developer, Singapore; PHP developer, Singapore
Lumatic was developing a navigation system for pedestrians, with proprietary routing algorithms at the core, and iOS navigation app Lumatic City Maps as the consumer-facing product. Acquired by Nanigans in October 2013 (the product was then shut down).
I was the sole iOS developer, and built the app from scratch, working closely with our product manager and graphics designer.
During the app development, we also experimented with background location tracking while conserving power, and region monitoring.
In addition to building the iOS app, I also worked on API development (Django), front-end on the developers' console (Javascript/jQuery) and helped coordinating an out-sourced team building the Android version of the app.
In October, 2013, Nanigans acquired Lumatic. Nanigans is a company in ad-tech business, providing a SaaS product for optimizing your ad campaigns but automating bidding and a/b testing of ad units, predicting the lifetime value of the customer and maximizing ROI.
I worked on rebuilding a part of the product (ad analysis engine) to make it more scalable and fast (the system is dealing with billions of records which all need to be aggregated in different ways to extract and show the useful data). I worked on modeling the database structure and providing an interface between the web front-end and data-processing back-end.
iOS, Xcode, Objective-C, PHP, MySQL, Photoshop, Git, REST client, Javascript, jQuery, Django, project management, navigation, location-based
Role: Acquiring clients, software development, working with other contractors.
In March 2009 I started my own agency / development shop, and ran it until I moved to Singapore. During this time, I worked on various projects and took on longer term contracts with several companies:
May 2011 - March 2012: ShoutEm
Role: Lead iOS developer, Zagreb/Croatia
ShoutEm is one of the leading mobile application builders in the world - they like to say they're building "Wordpress for mobile". I was working on the iPhone client as the lead iPhone developer.
Please see their website for more information, and here are some iTunes links:
Mobilizer, where you can test any apps you create on ShoutEm
and a couple of applications built on the platform:
Note: I worked on the native version of the app. They have since switched to HTML5, although the apps I've listed above are still published using the native version (at the time of this writing).
At ShoutEm, I worked as the lead iOS developer working directly with the CTO, CEO and graphics designer. The main challenge was creating a very generic, modularized app that can be skinned and where certain parts can be turned on or off.
iOS, Xcode, Photoshop, Subversion, REST client
September 2010 - April 2012: Gamepires
Role: Game programmer, Zagreb/Croatia
Gamepires is a young but very passionate game development team/studio, and they've recently released their first game, GasGuzzlers.
I worked mainly on the toolset. They already had a basic game engine, but no tools, and I built the world/level editor, material editor, some smaller utilities, and worked on game design (I wrote the original game design document, although it changed along the way).
C++, Visual Studio, Subversion, DirectX, game design, game development
January 2010 - September 2010: FiveMinutes Ltd.
Role: iOS developer, Zagreb/Croatia
Five Minutes Ltd. is the "parent" company of ShoutEm, which was initially started there, but later branched into a separate entity. As my first longer-term freelance deal, I worked as iPhone developer for a couple of their clients: RealNetworks from Seattle and AppSmart from London.
This was the period when I developed my core iOS skills, and got additional experience working with remote teams, for different clients and on tight schedules.
iOS, Xcode, CVS, Objective-C, OpenGL, remote work
Role: Founder, Zagreb/Croatia
I started the agency mentioned above with the intent on doing freelance work which would fund my own game development efforts. During this period, I worked for several, mostly US-based clients on smaller iPhone projects. Most notable was cooperation with Marroni Electronic entertainment on iLikeCereal!! and iBailout!!.
iLikeCereal!! started as a contract project for GameLoft, but the deal fell through and we eventually published it ourselves. Unfortunately it's not available on the AppStore anymore, but it was a toy-app where you could play with cereals in the milk, with realistic physics simulation of the liquid and cereals floating inside.
iBailout!! is a Pac-Man type game with a few twists and a satirical theme about the bailouts during the 2008 US recession. It was published by Hands-On Mobile.
iOS, Xcode, Objective-C, C++, Cocos2D, OpenGL, game development, remote work
May 2008 - March 2009: AVL-AST, Croatian branch
Role: Python/C++ developer, Zagreb/Croatia
It's a position I will remember the most for having worked with some of the most talented developers I have ever met. I was developing in Python (which I have learned there) on a part of their core development framework. This was a student job (3 days per week) where I've gained invaluable knowledge from the smarter and more experienced than myself.
Python, C++, Linux, CVS, GTK+
Role: C++/MFC developer, Zagreb/Croatia
I worked on an unmanned aircraft control station. This was a student job (3-4 days per week), marked by using bad technologies (MFC) and working with great people. The project itself was interesting though and I've learned a lot about deadlines, managing a big code base and dealing with external devices. I even got a chance to briefly work on the flight simulator used by the Croatian military. The company has since closed.
C++, MFC, Windows, UAV, simulator
Magic Match, Nummu
During my time at Lumatic, I developed a game called Magic Match - A Wizard Competition. It's a free-to-play, blitz-style game with unique mechanics.
I wanted to build something different, yet simple and accessible enough as any of the match-3 games out there.
Although I've long ago stopped thinking of going back into the game industry, I still sometimes get game ideas that itch to be tried out. This was one of them, and although relatively early into development I realized the mechanics aren't as attractive to other people as I thought they would be, it was a hobby project I enjoyed so I decided to finish it and make it the best it can be.
iOS, Xcode, Objective-C, Cocos2D, Photoshop, Git, game development, casual
In my spare time during 2008, I developed and released my first iPhone project, Sleek. This was the first Croatian iPhone app / game that was released in the AppStore. At that time (2008), there were no frameworks available for developing iPhone games, so a friend and I built our own, a simple 2D game engine.
C++, iOS, Xcode, Objective-C, game development, game engine, OpenGL
Before Soko Z.I., I worked as a game developer for gambling machines in a small company.
Prior to that, in 2006, I worked at CARNet (Croatian academic network) in technical support call center, which was my first official job (though not the first paid work I'd done). It wasn't programming, but it was useful talking to people who weren't tech-oriented and listening to their problems, trying to explain technical terms using non-technical language and being patient with customers who want to talk about their dogs :) It taught me a lot about customer service which proved valuable later on.
During my first year of college, I developed my first commercial game, called Bluerows. It was a logic / puzzle game and it was sold as shareware on BigFishGames. I pulled it from the site several months later, because it was picked up by a retail publisher in Croatia. It can still be found on the shelves of some Croatian supermarkets.
My LinkedIn profile.
Email: [email protected]
You can also reach me at +61 4 58 698 305
Looking forward to hearing from you!