Guardian News and Media

I worked as a freelance iOS contractor with Guardian News and Media in 2019-2020 on their Live News app, used by over a million readers every day.

• I introduced server-side rendered article support, removing the need for extensive client-side HTML templating. To make it work I built a bridge between native Swift code and WebKit’s JavaScriptCore, contributing Swift 5 support back to the Apache Thrift open-source project in the process.
• I improved homepage scrolling performance by 25% by profiling and rewriting the layout algorithm. This reduced battery drain and made the interface feel more responsive.
• I led a cross-functional team across iOS, Android, and design to introduce a semantic colour system, enabling dark mode to ship on both platforms simultaneously.
• I built a native consent management platform to meet privacy regulation requirements, and open-sourced the underlying Consent String SDK for Swift.