Top 12 IOS Developer Skills to Put on Your Resume
In today's crowded market, a sharp resume matters. iOS developers who spotlight the skills that prove real-world impact and steady growth tend to land interviews faster and ship better apps. Focus on the fundamentals, show currency with modern Apple frameworks, and make your story unmistakably yours.
iOS Developer Skills
1. Swift
Swift is Apple’s modern language for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. Safe by design, quick to compile, expressive enough to model complex domains. Today it anchors everything from system apps to indie experiments.
Why It's Important
It’s the primary language for new Apple-platform work, with features like async/await, actors, protocol-oriented design, and strong type inference that make code safer and easier to evolve.
How to Improve Swift Skills
Code every day. Small focused projects beat sprawling ones. Build, refactor, repeat.
Dig into language fundamentals: optionals, value vs reference types, error handling, generics, protocol extensions, result builders.
Adopt modern concurrency: async/await, Task groups, actors, structured cancellation, MainActor.
Read Apple’s docs and release notes; track new proposals and changes as Swift evolves.
Profile and measure. Benchmark hot paths, watch allocations, trim copies, embrace value semantics wisely.
Practice design patterns that fit Swift: composition over inheritance, MVVM, Coordinator, dependency injection.
Use Playgrounds and unit tests to explore ideas quickly and lock in behavior.
Consistency compounds. Write, measure, refactor, then do it again.
How to Display Swift Skills on Your Resume
2. Objective-C
Objective-C blends C with Smalltalk-like messaging and a dynamic runtime. It still powers large codebases and many Apple frameworks under the hood.
Why It's Important
Legacy apps, long-lived libraries, and some advanced runtime features stick with Objective-C. Interop with Swift is common, so the skill pays dividends in mixed projects.
How to Improve Objective-C Skills
Master memory management with ARC, bridging casts, and ownership qualifiers.
Use modern features: literals, subscripting, nullability annotations, lightweight generics, modules.
Understand the runtime: message sending, method swizzling (use sparingly), associated objects.
Strengthen UIKit/Foundation fluency and common patterns: Delegates, Notifications, KVC/KVO (and safer modern replacements).
Write clean bridges to Swift with thoughtful APIs and naming; keep headers tidy.
Profile with Instruments, fix retain cycles, and keep categories/extensions focused.
Comfort in both Swift and Objective-C makes you versatile on real teams.
How to Display Objective-C Skills on Your Resume
3. Xcode
Xcode is Apple’s IDE—editor, debugger, simulator, Instruments, interface tools, signing, and packaging all in one place.
Why It's Important
It’s the official toolchain for building, testing, profiling, and shipping apps across Apple platforms.
How to Improve Xcode Skills
Commit keyboard shortcuts to memory. Custom key bindings and command palettes save hours.
Tame build times: analyze build phases, trim scripts, prefer static linking when sensible, cache dependencies.
Use Schemes, Configurations, and .xcconfig files to separate environments cleanly.
Debug with intention: symbolic breakpoints, LLDB commands, memory graph, view debugging.
Profile often: Time Profiler, Allocations, Leaks, and Core Animation to catch problems early.
Leverage source control integration, code review diffs, and merge tools inside Xcode when it helps.
Adopt modern testing: test plans, parallelization, and Swift Testing or XCTest with focused, fast tests.
Automate: templates, code snippets, build scripts, and CI/CD (including Xcode Cloud or your preferred system).
Make the IDE work for you, not the other way around.
How to Display Xcode Skills on Your Resume
4. UIKit
UIKit is the long-standing framework for building interactive, event-driven interfaces on iOS and tvOS.
Why It's Important
Countless apps still rely on UIKit. Even with SwiftUI’s rise, UIKit remains essential for advanced customization and interoperability.
How to Improve UIKit Skills
Own Auto Layout: constraints, content hugging/compression, intrinsic size, stack views.
Build adaptive UIs: trait collections, size classes, Dynamic Type, right-to-left support, accessibility.
Use modern collections: diffable data sources and compositional layouts for smooth, scalable lists and grids.
Write clean navigation: Coordinators, reusable view controllers, clear data flows.
Animate with care: UIViewPropertyAnimator, transitions, gestures, spring dynamics.
Bridge with SwiftUI via UIHostingController when it simplifies specific screens.
Test on real devices for performance, touch latency, and rendering quirks.
Hands-on building beats theory—ship small features, refine, repeat.
How to Display UIKit Skills on Your Resume
5. Core Data
Core Data manages app data models with an object graph, persistence, and change tracking—more than “just a database.”
Why It's Important
It delivers robust persistence, undo/redo, and efficient fetching, all integrated with Apple platforms and tooling.
How to Improve CoreData Skills
Use NSPersistentContainer and background contexts for heavy work; merge changes carefully onto the main context.
Batch large operations with NSBatchDeleteRequest and batch updates to reduce memory and speed up migrations.
Index frequently queried attributes; tailor fetch requests with predicates, sort descriptors, and fetch limits.
Tune fetching: set fetchBatchSize, returnsObjectsAsFaults, includesPropertyValues judiciously.
Design relationships thoughtfully: inverse links, deletion rules, and to-many ordering.
Plan migrations: model versioning, lightweight migrations where possible, tests for schema evolution.
Profile with Instruments to spot blocking fetches, excessive faults, and memory spikes.
Good models plus lean fetches produce snappy apps.
How to Display CoreData Skills on Your Resume
6. Core Animation
Core Animation drives smooth, GPU-accelerated animations by manipulating layers and compositing efficiently.
Why It's Important
Delightful motion guides the eye, communicates state, and makes interfaces feel alive—without punishing battery life.
How to Improve CoreAnimation Skills
Animate the cheap properties: opacity, transform, position. Avoid unnecessary offscreen rendering.
Keep hierarchies shallow; mark views opaque when they are; rasterize static layers sparingly.
Batch with CATransaction; use CABasicAnimation, CAKeyframeAnimation, and CASpringAnimation for control.
Profile with the Core Animation instrument; watch FPS, GPU overdraw, and costly blends.
Precompute heavy assets; downsample large images; match @2x/@3x resources.
For custom pipelines, consider CAMetalLayer or CAEAGLLayer and precompile shaders where applicable.
Performance-first animations look better and feel better.
How to Display CoreAnimation Skills on Your Resume
7. RESTful APIs
RESTful APIs expose resources over HTTP using standard methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE) and formats like JSON.
Why It's Important
Most apps talk to servers. Robust networking means reliable data, fewer edge-case failures, and happier users.
How to Improve RESTful APIs Skills
Use URLSession with async/await and Codable for clean, readable networking code.
Handle HTTP correctly: status codes, idempotency, retries with backoff, and pagination.
Cache smartly with URLCache, ETags, and conditional requests to cut latency and bandwidth.
Secure the channel: HTTPS everywhere, certificate pinning where appropriate, careful token storage.
Design for change: API versioning, tolerant readers, and feature flags to avoid breaking older app versions.
Provide great UX under poor networks: timeouts, graceful fallbacks, offline queues, background transfers.
Log and observe: structured logs, metrics, and request tracing to diagnose issues fast.
Fast networks are fickle; resilient clients win.
How to Display RESTful APIs Skills on Your Resume
8. Git
Git tracks changes, branches ideas, and stitches teamwork together without chaos.
Why It's Important
Collaboration, rollback, experimentation—version control is the safety net and the timeline.
How to Improve Git Skills
Adopt a branching model that fits your team: trunk-based with short-lived branches or a lean feature-branch flow.
Write tight commits with meaningful messages; commit early, commit often.
Use rebase thoughtfully to keep history linear; prefer merges when preserving context matters.
Automate checks with pre-commit hooks: formatting, linting, and lightweight tests.
Harden your repo: .gitignore tuned for Xcode, sign commits, and tag releases.
Reach for git bisect when hunting regressions; stash work in progress without noise.
Manage large binaries with Git LFS or external storage; keep the repo lean.
Leverage Xcode’s source control or your favorite GUI for visual diffs when it helps.
Clear history makes future you grateful.
How to Display Git Skills on Your Resume
9. SwiftUI
SwiftUI is a declarative UI framework that lets you describe views in code and get live previews, with seamless behavior across Apple platforms.
Why It's Important
Rapid iteration, consistent design, less boilerplate, and a steady stream of new features each iOS cycle.
How to Improve SwiftUI Skills
Internalize data flow: @State, @Binding, @ObservedObject, @Environment, and @Observable where available.
Structure with MVVM and clean boundaries; keep view state minimal and predictable.
Embrace Previews and the #Preview macro to iterate fast; snapshot test critical views.
Master layout: stacks, grids, alignment guides, custom Layout types for complex screens.
Animate intentionally: withAnimation, transitions, matchedGeometryEffect, and custom timing curves.
Bridge when needed: UIHostingController and UIViewRepresentable/UIViewControllerRepresentable for UIKit views.
Track performance: avoid heavy work in body, prefer lightweight view models, memoize where sensible.
Small components, strong state discipline, and relentless previewing.
How to Display SwiftUI Skills on Your Resume
10. CocoaPods
CocoaPods is a dependency manager for Swift and Objective-C projects, long popular for integrating third-party libraries.
Why It's Important
Many mature codebases still depend on CocoaPods. Knowing how to maintain and troubleshoot those integrations is valuable, even as Swift Package Manager gains dominance.
How to Improve CocoaPods Skills
Pin versions carefully; avoid overly loose constraints to keep builds reproducible.
Prefer static linking when possible to cut launch times; measure the impact in your app.
Use post_install hooks thoughtfully for build-setting tweaks; document why they exist.
Cache pods in CI to shrink install times; keep Podfile.lock under source control.
Audit transitive dependencies and remove unused pods; smaller graphs build faster.
Periodically evaluate migrating pods to Swift Package Manager where feasible.
Stable, predictable builds trump novelty in production pipelines.
How to Display CocoaPods Skills on Your Resume
11. ARKit
ARKit powers augmented reality on iOS—tracking motion, understanding surfaces, and placing digital objects into the world.
Why It's Important
It unlocks immersive experiences for education, shopping, games, and utilities, especially on devices with LiDAR.
How to Improve ARKit Skills
Get the basics right: session configurations, plane detection, world tracking, lighting estimation.
Blend with RealityKit or SceneKit for rendering; test occlusion, shadows, and physics for realism.
Design for real spaces: scale, anchors, and persistence across sessions.
Optimize aggressively: reduce draw calls, compress textures, stream models, and watch memory.
Validate on real hardware in varied environments—lighting, textures, reflective surfaces.
Mind safety and UX: clear instructions, gentle onboarding, and limits on session fatigue.
Convincing AR comes from stable tracking and careful scene design.
How to Display ARKit Skills on Your Resume
12. CoreBluetooth
CoreBluetooth lets apps discover, connect, and exchange data with Bluetooth Low Energy devices like sensors and wearables.
Why It's Important
BLE powers IoT experiences—health, fitness, accessories, and industrial tools—where reliability and battery life really matter.
How to Improve CoreBluetooth Skills
Understand roles and states: central vs peripheral, CBCentralManager lifecycle, permission prompts.
Scan and connect efficiently: filter services, manage timeouts, and handle reconnections gracefully.
Respect the radio: minimize scans, batch reads/writes, and account for MTU limits and write types.
Design robust protocols: characteristic properties, notifications/indications, and clear error recovery.
Support background modes where appropriate; test disconnections, app suspensions, and restores.
Secure the link: pairing requirements, encryption, and privacy-sensitive data handling.
Instrument logs of RSSI, throughput, and failures to diagnose environmental issues quickly.
BLE success is patience plus precise state handling.
How to Display CoreBluetooth Skills on Your Resume
