Store submissions and review responses
Prepares App Store and Google Play releases: build metadata, screenshots, privacy declarations, staged rollouts. When a submission is rejected, writes the reply and the fix.
Fractional Teammates · Development
A senior mobile developer for part of your week
A senior mobile engineer from our Vancouver studio, embedded part-time in your team, keeping your iOS and Android apps shipping. Store submissions, SDK and OS upgrades, crash triage and offline behaviour — on a cadence you can plan around.
A senior specialist, not a junior placement You own the work and the accounts Reply within one business day
9:41●●●
Good morning
Your account at a glance
Balance
12,480
+240
−36
+1,200
Continue
What a mobile app developer is
OlDevs places a fractional mobile app developer inside your team for a defined slice of a senior engineer's week, owning the ongoing care of your iOS and Android apps rather than a one-off build.The work is release-shaped: cutting builds on a predictable cadence, preparing App Store and Google Play submissions, answering review rejections, upgrading SDKs before deprecation deadlines, testing against each new iOS and Android version, triaging crash reports, and fixing offline and background behaviour that only shows up on real devices. It suits organisations with a live app that needs steady senior attention but not a full-time mobile hire. Clients own all code, signing accounts and store listings.
Key facts
- 01Role type
- Fractional, ongoing, part-time
- 02Group
- Development
- 03Platforms
- iOS and Android
- 04Working style
- Your repos, board and standups
- 05Typical commitment
- 1–2 days a week
- 06Judged on
- Crash-free sessions · Release cadence · Store rating
Development
What a fractional mobile app developer takes off your plate
What this teammate takes off your plate
SDK and OS upgrade work
Tracks deprecation notices and annual OS releases. Tests your app against each beta, raises target SDK levels before the store deadline, and replaces libraries that stop being maintained.
Crash triage and stability
Owns the crash dashboard as a working queue. Groups reports by cause, reproduces on device, prioritises by affected sessions, and reports what moved between releases.
Offline and sync behaviour
Fixes what breaks on a weak connection: cached reads, queued writes, conflict handling, retry logic, and the states shown when the device has no network at all.
Release cadence and build pipeline
Sets a repeatable release rhythm and keeps the pipeline behind it healthy: signing, certificates, provisioning, beta channels, versioning and release notes people can read.
Mobile accessibility and device testing
Tests with VoiceOver and TalkBack, checks dynamic type and contrast against WCAG 2.2 AA, and verifies behaviour across the device and OS mix your analytics actually show.
Benefits
What changes once mobile has an owner
01
Mobile emergencies become scheduled work
A beta OS that breaks your login screen, a store policy change, a certificate about to expire — each arrives in the backlog with an owner and a date, instead of interrupting whoever is nearest on the Friday it breaks.
02
Platform migrations stop being experiments
Whether to follow a new OS API now or wait, whether a cross-platform framework still fits: judgement built over many annual releases and store policy shifts, and more than one app can keep occupied five days a week.
03
Signing keys and store access stay yours
Certificates, provisioning profiles, the developer accounts themselves and the release notes live in your organisation, documented as they are used. When people change, the next release does not wait on somebody else's laptop or personal Apple ID.
04
A bad build stops reaching everyone
Unlike a website, a shipped app cannot be taken back. A staged rollout, crash monitoring watched during it and a fix build ready mean a bad version reaches a fraction of your users rather than all of them.
05
Old app versions stop setting limits
Which builds you still support, and when users are asked to upgrade, becomes something your team decides. Your API and your product plans stop being shaped by whatever version happens to be sitting on people's phones.
06
Nobody else has to learn Xcode
Your web engineers stop being conscripted twice a year into signing builds, upgrading Xcode and Gradle, and answering store review rejections for a platform they otherwise never touch. Their own estimates stop quietly absorbing it.
How it works
How the engagement runs
1. We look at the app first
You show us the repositories, the store listings and the crash dashboard. We look at build health, SDK versions and outstanding store warnings before we discuss any scope.
2. We agree the slice and the cadence
We define how much of the week the teammate gives you, which release rhythm we are aiming for, and who inside your organisation approves a submission to the stores.
3. Access, not handover
You grant repository and developer-account access under your own licences. Signing keys stay in your custody. We document what we were given and why.
4. First release together
The first cycle is a real release run end to end, with your team watching. It surfaces the gaps in signing, testing and approvals faster than any audit would.
5. Weekly demo and a running queue
Every week: what shipped, what is queued, crash trends and any store or OS deadline coming up. Work stays visible in your tracker, not in a private backlog.
Who it's for
Who this suits
Fractional mobile work fits a specific situation: a live app with real users, ongoing maintenance that nobody senior currently owns, and not enough of it to fill a permanent role. These are the cases we see most often.
You shipped an app and then the team moved on
The build works but nobody owns it. Store warnings pile up, dependencies age, and the person who set up signing has left. Someone senior needs to hold the release process.
Your app is important but not your product
Associations, franchises and public bodies often run one member or field app. It matters to users, it does not justify a permanent mobile team, and it still must stay in the stores.
Your web team is being asked to cover mobile
Capable developers are losing days to provisioning profiles, review rejections and OS upgrade deadlines. A mobile specialist takes that queue and gives them their week back.
You need continuity across annual OS releases
Every autumn brings new iOS and Android versions and new store deadlines. You want someone who tracks those dates ahead of time rather than reacting to a removal notice.
12+
Years of studio experience since 2014
1–2
Typical commitment — 1–2 days a week
EN/FR
Languages this engagement can be delivered in
Other fractional roles
Often paired with
01
QA & Testing Engineer
A senior QA specialist from the OlDevs team, embedded part-time in your organisation.
Explore02DevOps & Cloud Engineer
A senior DevOps and cloud engineer from our Vancouver studio joins your team for a defined part of each week.
Explore03Back-End Developer
Your APIs, data models, queues and integrations get an owner who joins your standups and works in your repositories.
ExploreFAQ
Questions buyers ask before starting
Nothing changes hands, because nothing was ever ours. The code lives in your repositories, the apps are published under your Apple and Google developer accounts, and signing certificates and keys stay in your custody throughout. At the end of an engagement we close open tickets, write down the release procedure, certificate renewal dates and known issues, and hand back any access we were granted. There is no exit fee and no dependency built in on purpose.
Hiring gives you a full week of one person and the recruiting and retention that come with it. An agency usually sells fixed-scope projects and hands the app back at launch. Fractional sits between: senior mobile experience on an ongoing basis for part of a week, inside your team. It is not automatically cheaper than hiring — it is a better fit when the work is real but does not fill a full-time role.
When you are building a new app from zero on a hard deadline, part of a week will slow you down — that needs a project team. It is also wrong if your app is your core product with daily feature work, because that justifies a permanent mobile team. And if nobody internally can approve releases or hold the developer accounts, the arrangement stalls. We will say so at the quoting stage rather than after you start.
For maintenance, releases and crash work, usually yes — that is the common case, especially with a shared codebase such as React Native or Flutter. Where two native codebases have drifted apart or a platform needs deep work, the studio adds a second specialist rather than stretching one person thin. We tell you which situation you are in before the engagement starts, and again if it changes.
Cover comes from the studio, not from one calendar. Release procedures, credentials access and open issues are documented where your team can see them, so someone else can pick up a submission or a hotfix. Planned absences are flagged ahead of release dates. Messages get a reply within one business day. If a live incident needs a second discipline — back-end, DevOps, QA — the studio pulls that person in.
The teammate works in your tools: your repository, your issue tracker, your standups. You see commits, pull requests and tickets as they happen. Each week there is a demo of what shipped or what is queued for the next release, alongside a short read on crash-free sessions, store review status and upcoming SDK or OS deadlines. No separate portal and no monthly surprise report.
Let’s connect
Let’s talk about the mobile app developer gap.
Tell us what is not getting done and roughly how much of a week it needs. We’ll reply within one business day with who would cover it and a tailored quote — no obligation.