Tom Insam

Tom Insam

UK National, US permanent resident, currently living in New York.

tom@movieos.org / movieos.org / LinkedIn / +1 415 858 3260

About me

Staff iOS developer, architect, and team lead.

I’m an experienced and flexible tech lead, skilled in regularly shipping products to users, designing APIs, picking up and using new technologies quickly, and working on both native (iOS and Android) and web backends. I’ve worked at large companies like Meta and Dropbox, and taken two startups from first employee to acquisition.

Skills

  • Swift & Objective-C, UIKit & SwiftUI: iOS development (both iPhone and iPad)
  • Kotlin & Java: Android development (phones and tablets)
  • Python: Back-end development with Django, Rails and Perl
  • Other technologies: API design, A/B testing, Continuous integration, Backend services, Design systems

Work History

January 2022–October 2024: Dropbox (Staff engineer / IC5)

Usability group team lead on the Dropbox mobile app

At Dropbox I was a staff engineer on the main file sync and sharing app. I was attached to the Usability group rather than a specific team, but was frequently seconded to individual product teams to fill gaps and help them with larger-scale architecture problems. As such I was expected to be flexible and move between teams as needed. Amongst several other initiatives I was the primary developer on a redesign of the file browsing screen which significantly improved retention and number of actions taken on files.

Another role was on the design systems team where I owned the UI components and theme system for the mobile app. This was partly an engineering task and partly a coordination task between the various product teams and the design team, to find the right solution to product design problems. I was a primary internal point of contact for developers getting up to speed on using SwiftUI for new product screens, and advised on architecture best practices for new features.

As a Staff engineer I actively mentored other engineers, both junior and senior, across the whole mobile group. The Staff iOS group had regular meetings with every other mobile engineering team (around 40 developers total) to discuss anything that was top of mind, and these meetings were very well received and produced many improvements. I received frequent positive internal feedback for my efforts in working with other developers.

July 2020–December 2021: Meta (Software Engineer / E6)

Team lead for the Media Messaging group working on Facebook Messenger

At Meta, I was team lead for the Media Messaging group working on Facebook Messenger. Our team owned core media features, including sending images, videos and stickers in the Messenger app, and as lead I was responsible for both implementation of features and coordination with other teams in the Messenger group when this was needed to work on larger problems. On a team of 5 other developers I led a re-implementation of the image and video viewer, improvements to sticker sending, and the ability to send disappearing messages.

August 2013–July 2020: Eventbrite (Principal Software Engineer II)

Lead developer and mentor on the iOS Organizer app team.

I joined Eventbrite as a principal engineer on the native app team. I worked initially on the Android side where I rebuilt the Attendee and Organizer apps from the ground up. After that I moved to the iOS Organizer team, where I improved the rate of feature development by a factor of four by removing or updating legacy code and establishing better architectural patterns.

I was responsible for defining the Organizer app’s architecture as well as doing feature development, and I actively mentored the other developers. I also oversaw two libraries that are shared between the apps - a networking layer and a set of common UI components.

As a principal developer I participated in API design and architecture. I advised other teams on their REST endpoints, helping them make their APIs more consistent with the rest of Eventbrite, and helped them avoid the pitfalls and common mistakes that I’ve seen in the past. I gave talks on API design and best practices, and was regularly asked to provide advice when other teams have architecture problems.

November 2011–August 2013: Lanyrd (CTO)

Lead developer and CTO from very early in the company’s life through acquisition.

Lanyrd was a conference directory website where users could collaboratively add and edit conference information. As the first and senior backend developer, I was responsible for the Django application, associated services, and production infrastructure.

I also built native iOS and Android apps powered by a custom API. The apps used a declarative server language for screen layouts and navigation, enabling rapid cross-platform feature development without needing to wait for app store review, while maintaining native UI.

I automated the deployment process from several manual steps to a one-click continuous deployment system that any employee could use. This dramatically improved our ability to ship features quickly and onboard new developers.

Lanyrd was acquired by Eventbrite in August 2013 and I joined their native app development team.

Pre-2011 / Earlier roles

For a complete record of my work history before 2011, check LinkedIn.

Personal Projects

Flame - a Mac OS services browser (movieos.org/code/flame) - is available on the iOS and Mac app stores, and I maintain a list of other interesting or in-progress projects at movieos.org/code.

Education

Sep 1997 - Jul 2000: Bachelor of Science (Mathematics), Imperial College, University of London.

CV last updated November 2024.