PhoenixByte

Apps, APIs and the hardware they talk to.

I'm Filip Grebenac, a senior software engineer with 8 years of Android and 5 of Rust, plus native iOS, backend, web, AI agents, Bluetooth hardware and Unity. I can build every part of a product and make the parts work together.

Remote from Croatia (CET). Available for contracts of 20–25 hours a week.

Safety reports

offline
  • Bird strike on approachFiled at the gate, 2 photospending
  • Cabin smoke eventFiled in flightpending
  • Ramp incident1 attachmentpending

Saved on the device. Uploads start when the signal returns.

Four recent projects, each a different part of the stack. Tap a tab to replay it.

What I can build for you

Native Android first, with everything around it: sync, hardware, shared code, Rust, AI agents, and the backend and web parts of the product.

Offline-first Android apps

Apps that store everything locally, sync reliably in the background with WorkManager, and never lose a user's work. Encrypted local storage and clean recovery after crashes.

Bluetooth and hardware

Apps that discover, configure and update physical devices: IoT sensors, gateways, cameras and kiosk displays.

Native iOS and Kotlin Multiplatform

Native iOS apps in Swift and SwiftUI, or one Kotlin codebase for Android and iOS when the two apps should ship together.

Rust, imaging and Unity

Real-time camera pipelines and image processing in Rust, wired into Unity apps through a native plugin.

AI agents and chatbots

LLM agents that use tools, answer from your own data and talk to users in WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack or email, built on an agent harness with reviewable outputs.

Backend, APIs and web

The server side your apps talk to (REST and tRPC APIs, databases, background jobs, deployment on Linux with Docker) and the React or SvelteKit dashboards to run it.

Selected work

Recent projects. Client names are left out.

Icarus

Industry
Aviation safety
Role
Lead Android Engineer
Period
2022 – present

An offline-first app that crews and safety staff at 30+ airlines use, in 19 languages, to file safety reports, run audits and read operational manuals, often with no connection.

Offline and sync

  • Every report, risk assessment and audit is saved locally first in an encrypted database, so crews can work with no network.
  • Each record moves through draft, pending, uploading and synced states, so people always see what is still on the device.
  • Uploads run as background workers that resume after the app is killed. Manual sync runs in the foreground with a visible notification; automatic sync waits for Wi-Fi.
  • Manuals sync by folder for offline reading in an in-house PDF viewer, with outdated revisions flagged.

Scale

  • Each airline is set up from configuration (report forms, sign-in provider, branding), so a new client needs no app rewrite.
  • Split the app into feature modules, with unit tests on the sync layer.
  • Kotlin
  • WorkManager
  • Room + SQLCipher
  • Coroutines & Flow
  • Koin
  • Retrofit
  • WebSockets
  • FCM

Konfi.ai

Industry
Events, AI
Role
Software Engineer
Period
2026 – present

An AI agent that talks to conference attendees in WhatsApp and other chat apps, helps organizers run the event and captures leads for sponsors. A new product already in use at live conferences.

  • Work on the conversational agent that answers attendees and organizers over WhatsApp, Telegram, email, Apple Messages and Slack: a tool-calling LLM loop on the pi agent harness, with a knowledge base to answer from and playbooks for multi-step flows.
  • Built the knowledge-base review agent: it crawls an organizer's website, compares it with the event's knowledge base and proposes one set of changes for the organizer to review.
  • Prototyped the onboarding, organizer and WhatsApp agents (tools, sessions, prompts, web search) that went into the product.
  • Built LLM data pipelines for sales: conference discovery with structured extraction, a LinkedIn matcher and company enrichment.
  • Work across the whole stack: messaging webhooks, database migrations, background jobs, API and the organizer app.
  • AI agents
  • pi agent harness
  • Anthropic API
  • Tool calling
  • MCP
  • WhatsApp
  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Hono
  • tRPC
  • PostgreSQL

Casita

Industry
Household, consumer
Role
Founder and sole developer
Status
In development, not yet released

My own household app for keeping the home organized, in development and not yet released: bills, spending, shared shopping lists that sync live, calendar, meal planning, recipes, pantry, chores and loyalty cards. Native on iOS, a web app everywhere else.

  • A native iOS app in SwiftUI, with the shared logic in its own Swift package, Shortcuts and Siri support through App Intents, and on-device scanning of payment-slip barcodes with Vision.
  • The web app and API in SvelteKit, installable as a PWA, with live-syncing shopping lists, notifications and invite-only sign-in.
  • Unit tests with Swift Testing and UI tests with XCUITest; self-hosted with Docker.
  • Swift
  • SwiftUI
  • App Intents
  • Vision
  • XCUITest
  • SvelteKit
  • PostgreSQL
  • Docker

Interactive brand installations

Industry
Experiential marketing
Role
Software Engineer
Platform
Unity, Rust, Android

Camera-driven games, AR mirrors and kiosks for consumer brands at events and in stores. Visitors play with their body, and the app reacts in real time.

  • Built 30+ Unity apps (Unity 6, URP) that run unattended on Linux kiosks and are configured remotely.
  • Worked on the Rust core that Unity loads as a native library: camera input from webcams, RTSP streams and industrial cameras, and a lock-free worker pipeline that keeps frames flowing.
  • Image processing in Rust, plus pose and face detection workers that turn camera frames into game input.
  • Built an Android launcher for a dual-screen tabletop display that keeps both screens running through crashes and reboots.
  • Unity 6
  • C#
  • Rust
  • C FFI
  • FFmpeg
  • Image processing
  • Pose detection
  • Android kiosk mode

Sense4Boat Toolbox

Industry
Marine IoT
Role
Software Engineer
Period
2026

A field tool, built in Kotlin Multiplatform for Android and iOS, that installers use to set up and maintain cellular IoT sensors on boats.

  • Bluetooth discovery and connection for three device generations, with signal, battery, cellular status and firmware version.
  • Configuration over Bluetooth: mobile network and APN, server endpoints, encryption keys, measurement intervals.
  • Device maintenance: firmware updates through bootloader mode, time sync, factory reset and download of stored measurements.
  • Kotlin Multiplatform
  • Compose Multiplatform
  • Bluetooth LE
  • Ktor
  • iOS

Tools I use

I work AI-first with Claude Code, with tests and code review as the quality gate, so you get more done in fewer billed hours.

Android

Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Views, Coroutines and Flow, MVVM, Room, WorkManager, Koin, Hilt

iOS and cross-platform

Swift, SwiftUI, Swift packages, App Intents, Vision; Kotlin and Compose Multiplatform

Rust

Tokio, async services, image processing, FFI to Unity and Android

Hardware

Bluetooth LE, IoT sensors and gateways, cameras, kiosk devices

Backend

REST and tRPC APIs, TypeScript (Hono), Rust (Axum, SQLx), Python (Django, FastAPI), PostgreSQL, background jobs, LLM pipelines

Web

TypeScript, React (TanStack, Mantine), Svelte and SvelteKit, HTML and CSS

Delivery

Gradle, GitHub Actions, Firebase, Play Store releases, Docker, Linux servers

AI

pi agent harness, Anthropic API, tool calling, MCP, structured extraction, Claude Code

Also

Unity and C#

Working together

Simple terms for EU and international clients.

Location
Croatia, with full overlap with Central European working hours.
Availability
20–25 hours a week, remote. On-site visits are possible.
Contract
Through PhoenixByte, my registered Croatian business. EU clients are invoiced under reverse charge.
Rates
Hourly or fixed price, on request.
Languages
English (C1), Croatian (native).
Education
MSc and BSc in Computer Science, University of Zagreb (FER).

Have a project that needs a hand?

Send a few lines about the app, the timeline and the team, and I'll get back to you with next steps.

Email me