Joe McCraw.

Career record

Résumé

The canonical destination for Joe McCraw's current résumé and compact career chronology.

Current role

Senior Software Engineer, Mobile (iOS)/OTT (tvOS) — Paramount+ (Jul 2021 – Present, 5+ years). Senior engineer on the iOS/tvOS video playback team, contributing to Swift-based apps serving a 77M+ user base. Work spans playback, UI, debugging, tracking, StoreKit, API and framework integrations, testing, and content monetization workflows (DAI, SSAI, IMA). Served as a temporary team lead across iOS and tvOS delivery.

Product work includes Live Time Shifting, SharePlay, annual subscriber billing flows, accessibility across UIKit and SwiftUI, tvOS video player browsing, VPN detection, fixed selector navigation, the UEFA Live Showpage, and VAST companion ads. Uses Swift modern concurrency, async/await, dependency injection, TDD, UIKit, SwiftUI, MVC, and MVVM. Co-authored patent work on viewer-position optimization during this role.

Career chronology

iOS Developer — Mobile Programming LLC (May 2020 – Jul 2021)

Contract placement developing Swift-based iOS and tvOS applications for CBS Interactive / Paramount+, immediately preceding the direct hire above. Contributed to UI development, debugging, tracking, playback, StoreKit, API/framework work, and testing, including the annual subscriber billing flow and the UEFA Live Showpage.

Technical Advisor — Dovetail Labs (Sep 2019 – Dec 2022)

Contract technical advisor for a research initiative exploring bias in emotion-recognition and detection systems. Developed technical requirements and prototypes, and demonstrated variability in off-the-shelf open-source technologies (Python, Swift, JavaScript) as part of a grant effort accepted by Nesta. Prototyped and deployed Emojify, an interactive platform that gave 15,000+ visitors hands-on experience with the limitations of emotion-recognition systems.

Founder / iOS Developer — ShowBlender LLC (Mar 2014 – Apr 2021)

Founded and operated an independent studio, owning the full lifecycle of multiple Apple software products — concept, UX/UI, and prototyping through testing, App Store submission, maintenance, and crash monitoring. Built with native Swift and Objective-C using UIKit, CoreGraphics, CoreImage, ARKit, CoreAnimation, and MLKit. Shipped products included:

  • ColdSpotting (Jan 2018 – Jul 2020): Realtime Wi-Fi radio survey using iOS devices in augmented reality
  • BlendBuddy (Jan 2015 – Jul 2020): Color reproduction and image consistency tool for live-event and commercial AV installs
  • AIBias (Jul 2016): Image recognition prototype that surfaced questions about AI/ML classification and bias

High-Rez Video Engineer (V1/EIC) — IATSE Local 16 Union (Nov 2007 – May 2020)

A 12.5-year parallel career in live-event broadcast engineering, run concurrently with ShowBlender and the start of Dovetail Labs. Led high-resolution, multi-destination video operations for large-scale corporate and general session events, operating as EIC / Head Video Engineer across switchers, recorders, playback, projection, and media servers for mission-critical live video environments. Supported events for Salesforce, Oracle, Facebook, Apple, Cisco, and Google, and developed custom show control and automation using Companion, Octopus, and Swift.

Skills and practice areas

Languages & Platforms: Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Objective-C

Systems: iOS/iPadOS, tvOS, VisionOS, macOS, web, Firebase

Specializations: Accessibility semantics and testing, computer vision, real-time media systems, performance optimization and debugging, developer tooling, live broadcast video engineering (AVKit, show control automation)

Languages spoken: Portuguese

Open-source projects:

  • SwiftAccessibilityAgent (Feb 2026 – present) — accessibility guidance for humans and coding agents
  • RA11y Quest — accessibility training through VoiceOver game mechanics
  • SignalLab — hands-on iOS debugging and performance investigation
  • SpeechDictation — speech recognition with professional caption export
  • Postponavirus — ML prototype for behavioral intervention during COVID-19

Publications and achievements

Patent: Co-inventor, U.S. Patent 12,142,000 / publication US 2024/0153125 A1, "Method and system for optimizing a viewer position with respect to a display device," published May 9, 2024. Also see Justia record.

Book: Co-author with Jack Stone, Why Mass Unemployment?: Its Hidden Causes, Outrageous Consequences and What Can Be Done About It (Trafford Publishing, 2006). ISBN 1412087996. Goodreads · Waterstones · Amazon.

Nesta Grantee: Dovetail Labs, Citizen Science Labs initiative, Collective Intelligence Grants program, 2019–2020. Grantee announcement.

Certifications: See the certifications section on LinkedIn for the full list.

Education

University of California, Santa Cruz.

For the career narrative and context, see Work.

For selected case studies, see Projects.

Contact: Get in touch