James Border

I've been building mobile apps since the early days of the iOS SDK and Android, back when we were still figuring out what smartphones could do. These days I specialize in Flutter/Dart, but those native roots still inform how I think about performance, platform conventions, and user experience.

Most recently, I've been building AI-powered applications — not as a gimmick, but as a genuine attempt to create software that's more responsive, more personal, and more useful than what came before. Sophi.bot uses conversational AI to help students develop critical thinking skills. Case Files lets you solve classic detective mysteries by actually talking with Holmes, Dupin, and Father Brown. Both apps I designed, architected, and shipped myself — mobile frontend to cloud backend.

From 2018-24, I was Mobile Application Architect at Rack Room Shoes, where I led the migration from native iOS/Android to Flutter and then broke the monolith into modular packages. Before Rack Room, six years of freelance and agency work for clients ranging from startups to Fortune 500 brands after 5 years of cutting my teeth on mobile development at Coolfire Media in St. Louis.I'm open to full-time roles and contract work.

If you're building something interesting in mobile — I'd like to hear about it. My personal brand is now and always has been about meeting the difficult challenges: "let's figure it out" is my default mode of operation.