Alex Culeva

Expert Mobile SDK Engineer

iOS · AR · On-Device ML · Low-Level Performance

Chișinău, Moldova · Remote

Summary

iOS and on-device computer-vision engineer with 11 years shipping mobile products at the edge of what phones can do. Specialized in AR/spatial SDKs and on-device ML that other teams build on — ARKit pose pipelines, LiDAR-free depth, real-time Gaussian Splatting, and low-level performance work. Founder & CEO of The Noughty Fox, Moldova's first mobile AR & CV R&D studio, and a top-ranked ARKit specialist trusted by clients worldwide.

Highlights

#1 organically-ranked ARKit expert on Upwork over the past year, with $200K+ earned
Client products acquired by Apple (Q.ai, $1.6B) and Instacart (Arpalus)
On-device ML & low-level performance — reimplemented a core golf-prediction algorithm from ~50s to under 4s

Skills

Languages: Swift, Objective-C, C, Metal Shading Language, TypeScript, Python, Ruby
AR / Spatial: ARKit, ARCore, RealityKit, SceneKit, RoomPlan, Metal, LiDAR & LiDAR-free depth, SLAM / camera pose, indoor localization, 3D measurement, 3D Gaussian Splatting
Computer Vision / ML: On-device CV, Core ML, Vision, MediaPipe, AVFoundation, object detection & tracking (YOLO), CLIP / PaliGemma, LLMs (OpenAI, Gemini, Llama), RAG & vector search
iOS & Architecture: SwiftUI, UIKit, Combine, Core Data, SDK design + distribution (SPM, CocoaPods), public API design, modular frameworks, protocol-oriented design, MVVM / Coordinators
Delivery & Tooling: Xcode, Instruments (performance profiling), Fastlane, CI/CD, TestFlight, App Store submission & review, BLE / IoT
Leadership: Team leadership (15), hiring, B2B SDK partnerships, 0→1 product, product strategy

Experience

The Noughty Fox Chișinău, Moldova · Mar 2021 – Present

Founder & CEO

Founded and lead Moldova's first mobile AR & computer-vision R&D studio; scaled a team of 15 building on-device spatial and ML products at the edge of consumer-phone hardware.
Started by gathering a team to build Enclaves — an app where players battle over a live real-world map — which set the studio's course into AR and spatial computing.
Ship production on-device pipelines across ARKit / ARCore / RealityKit — feature-point tracking, LiDAR-free depth mapping, indoor localization, 3D positioning and real-time measurement.
Built on-device CV/ML with Vision, MediaPipe, Core ML and YOLO — face/body tracking, object detection, and golf ball detection, trajectory and tracking.
Delivered an on-device 3D Gaussian Splatting capture pipeline and RoomPlan-based reconstruction running real-time on consumer iPhones.
Shipped TNF360 (consumer virtual-tour product) to production deployments incl. the Moldovan Academy of Sciences; negotiated B2B SDK design-partner deals with German proptech (signed LoI).

Selected Engagements — a selection from 40+ delivered via The Noughty Fox

Q.ai Acquired by Apple · $1.6B Tel Aviv (remote) · Apr 2025 – Feb 2026

Mobile R&D Consultant

CloPinz Debuted at PGA Show Sacramento (remote) · Jul 2025 – Jan 2026

Advisor & Mobile AR Lead — equity stakeholder

Built real-time ARKit golf-precision measurements for the flagship app.

Arpalus Acquired by Instacart Netanya (remote) · Jan 2025 – Dec 2025

Mobile AR & CV Consultant

Mobile AR & computer vision consulting, with my team, through to the acquisition.

Autarc Remote · Nov 2025

Mobile AR & CV Consultant

Improved app performance and resolved stability/crash issues across the AR/CV pipeline.

ShotSense Golf Reston, VA (remote) · Oct 2024 – Jul 2025

Mobile Algorithms Lead

Built the most advanced personalized golf-shot prediction engine running on a phone; reimplemented the core algorithm to run in under 4 seconds, down from ~50.

MicroAGI Raised €55M Remote · Jul 2025

Mobile CV Consultant

Built an ARKit / MediaPipe data-collection app for on-device model training.

Resonai Tel Aviv (hybrid) · Mar 2022 – Mar 2024

Mobile R&D Lead

Owned the entire mobile infrastructure — iOS & Android SDKs, performance, testing, client integrations, and product alignment / quarterly planning.

Earlier Experience

Polarsteps Amsterdam · Dec 2019 – Mar 2021

Senior iOS Developer

Sole iOS developer: custom transitions and animation math, Realm persistence, tooling, CI/CD and App Store releases for a travel app at scale.

Crunchyroll (Ellation) Chișinău & San Francisco · Jan 2017 – Jun 2019

Senior Software Engineer · iOS Developer

Built the iOS video player, an offline-playback + DRM framework, analytics and UI-styling frameworks; later tech lead over architecture and CI.

YOPESO Chișinău · Aug 2015 – Dec 2016

iOS Developer

Shipped a device-data collection SDK and led the Emoji project — a runtime custom-font framework and custom keyboard.

Education

Universitatea Tehnică a Moldovei — B.Eng. Computer Engineering · 2014–2018
Middle East Technical University — Computer Science · 2013–2014

Languages

Romanian — native
English — fluent
Russian — fluent
Turkish — intermediate
Spanish — intermediate