Let’s talk

Hi, I’m Rob Gillett.

Senior iOS Engineer, Mobile Product Leader, Founder and CTO, Patented Inventor

I turn complex business challenges into products people rely on.

I connect business goals and customer needs through product strategy, thoughtful design, native iOS engineering and the infrastructure behind the experience. From aircraft navigation to commerce and live events, I take ownership from the first idea through launch, learning from real use and refining what matters.

Explore my workLet’s talk
12+ years building mobile productsFounder & CTOPatented inventorLos Angeles
Guiding an approach to the drop zone, from the copilot seat
Farcast · in-flight navigationResearch, design and engineering

Twelve years of software that has to work the first time: in the cockpit, at the counter and at the festival gate.

99%

Delivery accuracy supported by the navigation and telemetry systems I built at Farcast.

$0 → $2M+

Annual recurring revenue CannaCtrl customers grew to on products I founded and built.

1 patent

On-device identity-document scanning and verification, invented at the counter where it was needed.

50+

Students mentored at Brown; their teams launched three ventures and raised $150K+ in follow-on funding.

Built and led at

Farcast SystemsCannaCtrlSneakerWeekNike Design CombineApple’s Planet of the AppsBrown University

Work.

Products built around real operational challenges. Each one shows the problem, what I owned, the connected surfaces and one result that mattered.

Showing 6 of 6 projects

Farcast. Bringing clarity to cargo delivery from the copilot seat.

#iPadOS#Hardware#3D#Offline
Release point · predicted from wind, heading and airspeed
Cargo-drop navigation for pilotsPrincipal iOS Engineer · 2022–23

Pilots delivering cargo into remote and disaster-affected areas needed to plan a route, read the approach and release on time, with divided attention and no reliable connection. I owned the research, design and engineering of the iPad app they fly with.

What I owned

Pilot interviews, weekly airdrops flown as copilot, offline maps, route planning, trajectory prediction, 3D guidance and the avionics integration, through to navigation systems supporting 99% delivery accuracy.

Research in the seat.

Pilot interviews, TestFlight builds, simulator time and weekly drops as copilot showed how the app performed where it was built to work.

Side-by-side 2D and 3D.

SceneKit terrain beside the route, so one glance shows where the aircraft is and what happens next.

Trajectory prediction.

Position, pitch, yaw, speed and wind feed a live prediction of where the cargo lands, so the pilot decides with evidence.

Works without a signal.

Regional map downloads, local terrain data and Core Data persistence keep the whole mission available in flight.

CannaCtrl. Connecting the sale, the inventory and the delivery.

#iOS#macOS#Web#Hardware#Payments
Smart assignment · capacity, delivery windows, stop order
Dispensary POS, commerce and deliveryFounder & CTO · 2020–24

California dispensaries ran sales, inventory, compliance and delivery as separate problems. Owning the operator, driver and customer experience let me treat them as one connected business.

What I owned

Native iOS and macOS POS, customer commerce, inventory, dispatch, driver tracking, printers and card readers, the state track-and-trace integration and a patented identity workflow. Customers grew from $0 to $2M+ in annual recurring revenue on the platform.

Patented ID check.

On-device document scanning and verification, fast enough for a busy counter and private by design.

Smart dispatch.

One click turns orders into routes fitted to capacity, delivery windows and stop order, with live driver tracking.

Storefront builder.

Each dispensary builds its own store in a drag-and-drop editor, with live stock from the POS.

Compliance built in.

California’s METRC track-and-trace is part of the data model, so every sale and transfer reconciles with the state.

SneakerWeek. Connecting the ticket purchase to the experience at the gate.

#iOS#macOS#Web#Payments
Check in guests at the main gate
Festival ticketing, staff tools and operationsCTO · 2024–now

Ticketing, payments, staff tools and reporting had to work together at the pace of a live festival. As CTO I built the platform behind Sneaker Week PDX: a crew ops app, an organizer console and an attendee app.

What I owned

Architecture, native iOS staff tools, QR validation and check-in, Tap to Pay, the responsive ticket store, APIs, attendance tracking and the dashboards organizers run the event from.

Tap to Pay.

Merch, bar and ticket checkout on iPhone through Stripe, with no card reader to carry.

Gate check-in.

QR scanning with a searchable guest list and a visible live/offline state, so the gate never stalls.

Organizer console.

Analytics, programming, map editor, one sales ledger, CRM, newsletters and CMS.

Attendee app.

Schedule, vendors, event map, pass purchase and a QR pass wallet.

Nike Design Combine. A 3D sneaker configurator that shoots its own campaign.

#iPadOS#3D#GenerativeAI
Midsole · patent leather
3D product configurator for SneakerWeekCTO, SneakerWeek

For SneakerWeek’s Nike Design Combine, designers needed to see their colorway as a real product before a sample was cut. I built an iPad app to customize a 3D Air Jordan 1 and render it as campaign photography.

What I owned

Real-time 3D rendering, the configurator experience and in-app image generation, with Nike, Adidas and Under Armour among SneakerWeek’s brand partners.

19 editable parts.

From collar lining to sole stitching, each part takes its own color.

5 finishes.

Leather, suede, patent leather, rubber and foil.

360° rendering.

Rotate, zoom and inspect every panel in real time.

Campaign shots.

The finished colorway rendered on foot, in studio and on the shelf.

Maven’s List. Booking creators, with the receipts.

#iOS#Marketplace#Payments
Discover screen with brands and campaigns
Campaign detail with deal points
Audience map of a creator’s followers
Who does this creator actually reach?
Creator marketplaceProduct, design and engineering

Brands booking creators were paying for an audience they couldn’t see. A two-sided iOS marketplace shows exactly who a creator reaches and releases payment only when the work is done.

What I owned

The whole product, built alongside the creators who shaped its features: social audience data, campaign deal points and Stripe and Plaid escrow.

Real audience data.

Facebook, Instagram and TikTok demographics on every creator profile.

Escrow payments.

Stripe and Plaid release payment once every deal point is done.

Clear deal points.

Deliverables and budgets agreed before anyone applies.

Discover.

Brands and paid campaigns, side by side.

Watt Ave. Every driveway, a charging station.

#iOS#Hardware#Payments
Map of home chargers priced per kWh
Charger detail with hourly availability
Live charging session
Charge near home, priced per kWh
Peer-to-peer EV chargingProduct, design and engineering

EV drivers without a home charger and homeowners with one sitting idle are neighbors. Watt Ave lets homeowners rent their chargers by the hour, with the meter doing the accounting.

What I owned

Scheduling, Apple Pay booking, host earnings and the Tesla Wall Connector integration that tracks every kWh delivered.

Find a charger.

Home chargers on the map, priced per kWh.

Book a window.

Drag to pick a time and see the price instantly.

Apple Pay.

Every fee shown upfront, paid with one double-click.

Live kWh tracking.

Tesla Wall Connector data powers charging stats and host earnings.

From the interface to the infrastructure.

A useful product connects what customers need with how a business actually operates. My work spans the mobile experience, the services and data behind it, and the tools teams use to run it every day.

Product strategy and discovery

Turning an unclear request into a prioritized workflow and a release scope you can actually ship. Founder and CTO ownership, customer feedback, stakeholder requirements.

CannaCtrl · SneakerWeek

Interaction design

Layouts, navigation and feedback that help someone finish a task with less confusion. Figma, Sketch, Framer, SwiftUI prototyping, design systems, Apple HIG.

Farcast · Nike Design Combine

Native Apple applications

Interfaces, application state and reusable components that hold together as one product. Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, Auto Layout, Combine, async/await, on iOS, iPadOS and macOS.

Every project here

Local data and offline operation

Deciding which actions work without connectivity, what state is preserved and what happens when the connection returns. Core Data, SwiftData, encrypted storage, sync queues.

Farcast · CannaCtrl · SneakerWeek

Location, media and connected hardware

Software that works with real places, devices and operating constraints. Core Location, MapKit, Mapbox, Core Bluetooth, AVFoundation, Multipeer; avionics, printers, card readers, Tap to Pay, the Tesla Wall Connector.

Farcast · CannaCtrl · Watt Ave

3D interfaces and predictive workflows

Visualization and prediction that help people understand a situation and decide. SceneKit terrain and guidance, live trajectory prediction, a real-time product configurator, GPU and thermal budgets.

Farcast · Nike Design Combine

Web applications and internal tools

Customers, staff and operators working with the same business processes. React, Next.js, React Router, React Native and Expo, responsive storefronts, dashboards and consoles.

CannaCtrl · SneakerWeek

Backend services, APIs and data

Where business rules live, how apps exchange data reliably and how records stay consistent enough to report on. REST APIs, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Supabase, MongoDB, Firebase, Convex, AWS, Google Cloud, Cloudflare.

CannaCtrl · SneakerWeek · Maven’s List

Identity, payments and integrations

Fitting identity, permissions, transactions and outside systems into the user’s journey. Patented document verification, access controls, Stripe, Apple Pay, Plaid escrow, Tap to Pay, California METRC.

CannaCtrl · SneakerWeek · Maven’s List · Watt Ave

AI-assisted development

Claude Code and Google Gemini for faster exploration, scaffolding and iteration, while I own the product context, the architecture and the review of what ships.

Current practice · see Approach

The complete platform behind the experience

Select a layer to see where it showed up in my work
Responsibilities

Sign-in, account lifecycle, sessions, roles and server-side authorization; tenant isolation on shared business platforms.

Why a business cares

Customers and staff get the right access to their information and tools, and nothing else.

Where I built it · CannaCtrl

Each dispensary ran as its own tenant on one platform, with operator, driver and customer roles, plus a patented on-device ID verification step at the counter.

Security, monitoring, deployment and recovery run across every layer: secure local storage, encrypted connections, least privilege, crash reporting and tested backups.

Understand the problem. Ship something useful. Keep improving.

I start with the people doing the work: what slows them down, what they are trying to achieve and where existing tools get in the way. I connect those observations to the business goal, test the riskiest assumptions early, and build a clear path from the first useful release to the next improvement.

01

Understand

Observe the workflow, name the constraints and agree on the outcome. At Farcast that meant interviews and a seat in the aircraft.

02

Explore

Prototype alternatives and question the requested solution. I build prototypes in SwiftUI so the test is the real thing in someone’s hands.

03

Prioritize

Choose the smallest useful scope and find the decisions that are costly to reverse, like the data model under a compliance system.

04

Build

Connect design, native apps, services, data and the operational tools, so the product works for the customer and the person running it.

05

Learn

Use feedback and product evidence to decide what changes next. Weekly airdrops, festival days and a busy counter are the best test labs I’ve had.

One decision, in detail · Farcast

What has to keep working when the signal dies.

The constraint

Cargo drops happen over remote or disaster-affected areas with intermittent connectivity, while the pilot’s attention is already on flying.

The choice

Treat the whole mission as local: regional map downloads, terrain data and mission state persisted in Core Data, with the 2D route and 3D guidance side by side so one glance answers “where am I” and “what happens next”.

What happened

Flying as copilot on weekly airdrops showed the app performing in the environment it was built for, and the navigation and telemetry work supported 99% delivery accuracy.

AI-assisted development

A faster path from idea to iteration.

I use Claude Code and Google Gemini to streamline development and accelerate iteration. I bring the product context, make the architectural decisions and own the quality of what ships.

I directThe problem, the constraints, the architecture and which options are worth exploring.
AI helpsExploring implementation options, working through unfamiliar code, drafting scaffolding and documentation.
I verifyEvery change is reviewed, tested against the product and shipped on my judgment.

Engineer. Founder. Product leader.

I’m Robert Charles Gillett, a Los Angeles–based senior iOS engineer and technical founder with 12+ years of experience bringing mobile products from discovery through launch. My work has taken me into aircraft cockpits, retail operations and live events, environments where software has to make sense to the people depending on it.

With a background in engineering and economics from Brown University, I approach product decisions through both the customer’s experience and the business behind it. I’ve founded a company, led technology teams, taught product development and invented a patented identity-verification workflow. I’m comfortable moving between a customer conversation, an interface prototype and the engineering needed to make it work.

Brown ’12 · Engineering + EconomicsAll-Ivy linebacker · 2008 Ivy championsPro football in ItalyTaught at Brown · 50+ students

Experience

SneakerWeek · CTO
2024 — now
Farcast Systems · Principal iOS Engineer
2022 — 2023
CannaCtrl (formerly LoudCloud) · Founder & CTO
2020 — 2024
Brown University · Instructor, technology entrepreneurship
2015 — 2016
Brown University · BA Engineering, BA Economics
2012
A founder’s perspective

My perspective comes from building businesses as well as software.

I’ve had to define a problem, explain why it matters and turn that vision into a product people can use. That experience shapes how I work with customers, prioritize features and take responsibility for the result.

The LoudCloud story started at my own dispensary in Compton, turning away patients who had lost their paperwork. I built a secure way to store and retrieve those documents, tested it at the same counter, took the company through the Canopy accelerator at the top of its cohort, and pitched it on Apple’s Planet of the Apps. It grew into CannaCtrl.

Planet of the Apps · Ep. 10
The founder of LoudCloud turned adversity into opportunity

Watch the founder feature from Apple’s Planet of the Apps. Opens on the show’s official page.

What are you trying to make possible?

Have a product to launch, a workflow to improve or a platform that needs a clearer direction? Let’s talk about the challenge, the people it affects and what a useful first step could look like. Open to senior and lead iOS roles, technical product leadership and partnerships.

Build a new mobile productImprove an existing experienceConnect apps with business operationsTechnical product leadership
Start a conversation(323) 580-2201

TheRobGillett@gmail.com · Los Angeles, CA · Remote, or onsite in California, Oregon and Washington