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Portrait of Manuel Welsch

Manuel Welsch

Product Engineer · iOS, macOS

Open to product engineering roles, employed or freelance · Düsseldorf · Köln · Remote

I care deeply about the small interactions that make great tools feel effortless, and the systems behind them that make complex workflows possible.

Selected Work

Dotted Mind

2025 – present

Solo developer & designer

Native iPad notebook built around Apple Pencil. First version 2019 – 2021, rebuilt from scratch in 2025.

  • Public TestFlight beta since June 2026: 14 releases shaped by tester feedback. v1.0 in App Store review
  • Fluid handwriting in notebooks of 10,000 pages: custom UICollectionView caching, profiled with Instruments
  • Swift 6 strict concurrency, 3,000+ tests, CI/CD with GitHub Actions and fastlane

SwiftUI · UIKit · PencilKit · Core Data · CKSyncEngine · RevenueCat · PostHog

Landing page · App Store →

LKW.APP

2021 – 2025

Mobile App Developer

Europe-wide platform for truck drivers: truck-specific routing, parking information, community and partner integrations.

  • Built and shipped app features end to end, from MVP to 50,000+ users, in an 8-person Scrum team
  • Took on architecture and feature planning, backend reviews and selected backend features
  • Owned releases and CI/CD; onboarded and mentored junior developers

Flutter · HERE SDK · Firebase · NestJS · GraphQL · Google Analytics

Ableton Live Control System

2015 – 2023

Solo project, on and off

Control system for Ableton Live, used with hardware controllers and my own iPad app in my music production and live performances. Later rewritten in SwiftUI.

  • Swift API on the Mac with event listeners and actions for tracks, volume and devices, bridged over OSC to a Python MIDI Remote Script, and shared by the iPad app and the hardware controllers
  • Hardware controllers with layered, shift-style controls, so a few buttons cover many functions
  • Custom faders and encoders drawn with SwiftUI Canvas and CALayer
  • Bachelor thesis on one slice of the system: measuring and cutting latency to under 5 ms median from the iPad to Ableton Live

SwiftUI · AudioKit · SwiftNIO · Combine · Python

Tools

GitHub →

How I Work

I combine product thinking with disciplined engineering. I validate ideas early, let analytics and user feedback guide iteration, and build for reliability and scale where it matters most: data, sync, and performance.

I work with AI agents daily, delegating implementation while owning architecture, UX, and technical direction. This lets me prototype directly in the product and refine interactions until they feel right.

Every change goes through my review, strict Swift 6 concurrency checks, and automated tests. That’s how I built Dotted Mind solo: 3,000+ tests and 14 beta releases.

Stack

Apple

Swift · SwiftUI · UIKit · Swift Concurrency · PencilKit · Core Data · CloudKit · CKSyncEngine · StoreKit

Web & Backend

TypeScript · NestJS · Python · GraphQL · Google Cloud · Cloudflare

Quality & Delivery

CI/CD · Unit Testing · TDD · Performance Profiling (Instruments)

Education

B.Sc. Media Informatics, Hochschule Düsseldorf

Thesis: Low-latency, low-jitter MIDI/OSC transmission from Ableton Live to an iPad app

AudioKit · SwiftNIO · SwiftUI

Project: step sequencer controller for Ableton Live (two Launchpads, Teensy with endless encoder), team of two