James Hays
iOS architect and staff engineer. Writing software since 2000 and building iPhone apps since the App Store opened in 2008.
Senior iOS architect who ships hard products and leaves teams faster and cleaner than he found them. Full-lifecycle architecture, legacy rewrites, and process work for Fortune 500 companies, global enterprises, and startups.
Experience
Senior Staff Engineer, iOS
Owns major features and platforms across a large, multi-team iOS codebase: Map Annotations 2.0, the documents and PDF stack, sync and Core Data modernization, and the team’s blameless postmortem program.
Lead and senior iOS roles
Expedia · Hyatt
At Expedia, led a full rewrite of a legacy Objective-C app into a layered Swift architecture. At Hyatt, builds the native iOS guest booking experience in Swift and SwiftUI.
Selected consulting highlights
Hays Software Development LLC
- Agrium — Recruited and led a team to unify agriculture sales tools across recent acquisitions into one mobile sales platform.
- Point Clear Solutions / St. Jude Medical — Bluetooth medical-device integration with MVVM patterns that supported FDA validation.
Trover
Travel discovery, acquired by Expedia
Lead iOS developer on Trover, the travel discovery app that Expedia acquired.
Swakker
Lead iOS Architect
An early chat app that held the top of the App Store charts for weeks. Led the product end to end: requirements, wireframes, iOS and web services, and server work.
Founder & Principal Architect
Hays Software Development LLC · since 2010
Today: Hays Software’s iPhone and iPad games, plus AI voice, web and automation services for small businesses.
How he works
He designs the work, sets direction, reviews and tests every result, and makes the calls. AI tools handle grunt work. Wisdom, empathy, and judgment stay with the engineer. He writes about it in an ongoing series on engineering in the AI era.
Skills
iOS, Swift, SwiftUI, Objective-C, Xcode, mobile architecture, MVVM and layered patterns, Agile / Scrum, team leadership, REST, GraphQL, engineering leadership, Swift Concurrency, Core Data, Swift Package Manager, PDF and document platforms, AI-assisted workflows (directed and reviewed by James). Earlier depth in Java / J2EE, Spring, Hibernate, and enterprise web platforms.
Flying
I’m an instrument-rated private pilot with nearly 600 hours, more than half of them cross-country, and I fly a Cessna 182RG. I’m working toward my commercial certificate now. Flying is also the day job in a way: at ForeFlight I build iOS software that pilots use in the cockpit. Off the clock, I give back through Angel Flight West and Civil Air Patrol.
Education
B.S. in Computer Science from Doane College (now Doane University).