Salari, by Mike Salari
What is actually blocking your engineering career?
Find the bottleneck, then fix it with the right book, tool or playbook.
Career systems for iOS, Android & cross-platform engineers. Built from 15+ years of production systems, 500+ technical interviews, and experience across Apple, Cisco, Adobe, Visa and Mastercard.
Staff Mobile Engineer · Mobile Architect · Tech Lead · Published author
How Salari works
Diagnose
Tools and the quiz find your real bottleneck
Choose a path
Pick the career problem in front of you
Fix it
Use the book, resource or playbook that solves it
Go deeper
Essays and the next path as the pressure changes
Start with the problem, not the product
What are you trying to fix right now?
Pick the career pressure in front of you. Each path tells you the symptoms, the first move and the book or tool that solves it. Not sure? The quiz will route you.
Get Hired
Make your skill visible before the interview starts.
Build your signalPass Interviews
Turn real iOS knowledge into answers interviewers can reward.
Prepare answersLead Teams
Move work through people, not only through code.
Lead betterBecome Staff
Build influence beyond your own team.
Build influenceDesign Systems
Reason about mobile systems at architect altitude.
Design systemsManage Organizations
Grow engineers, teams and delivery systems deliberately.
Manage wellBuild With AI
Bring AI into mobile products without cargo-cult architecture.
Explore AIWork Independently
Turn mobile architecture judgment into independent income.
Consult smarterFree tools
Not sure where you stand? Measure it.
Three free tools turn a vague feeling of being stuck into a specific thing to fix, before you buy anything.
Find my path quiz
Answer a few questions and get the path, book and first action that match where you are.
Take the quizEngineer Visibility Score
Score the professional signals recruiters see before they ever evaluate your code.
Score my signalATS Resume Scanner
Scan your resume locally and fix what parsing, structure and keyword matching expose.
Scan my resumeThe books
Choose the book that matches your situation.
Each book solves one specific career pressure. Start where the pressure is, and go deeper from there.
The 24-Hour iOS Interview Answer Book
Interview in days?
The 24-Hour iOS Interview Answer Book
Answers that hold up under follow-up, for the loop that is almost here.
View the bookThe iOS Interview Blueprint
Preparing seriously?
The iOS Interview Blueprint
The complete senior and staff interview system, from coding to behavioral.
View the bookEngineer Visibility Blueprint
Not getting opportunities?
Engineer Visibility Blueprint
Fix the resume, LinkedIn and outreach signals that decide if recruiters reach out.
View the bookAltitude
Growing beyond senior?
Altitude
Think in systems and make the jump from senior mobile engineer to staff.
View the bookThe flagship · for Become Staff and Design Systems
Altitude
The missing bridge between senior mobile engineer and staff engineer.
A field guide for senior mobile engineers, staff engineers, mobile architects and technical leads who need to reason across mobile architecture, BFFs, security, observability, sync, distributed systems, cloud and incidents.
- Mobile system design
- Backend-for-Frontend
- Distributed systems
- Security: OAuth, OIDC, JWT
- Observability and reliability
- Real architecture case studies
Writing
Essays that go deeper on the same problems the paths and books solve.
Mobile System Design Is Not Backend System Design
Why offline, device constraints, sync, app lifecycle and platform boundaries change the interview and the architecture.
Why iOS Apps Feel Slow Even When The API Is Fast
A practical look at the client-side bottlenecks that make mobile apps feel slow after the backend has already done its job.
Swift concurrency bugs that pass code review
Four Swift concurrency bugs that survive code review at good companies: actor reentrancy, leaked tasks, ignored cancellation, and the onAppear trap. With fixes.
How To Review A Mobile Architecture Proposal
A practical review framework for mobile architecture decisions: constraints, reversibility, ownership, migration and production proof.
Senior iOS Interviews Are About Risk
The strongest candidates do not just answer the question. They show how they think about production risk, tradeoffs and recovery.
Free resources
Checklists and templates you can use today, no purchase required.
Developer Career Bottleneck Checklist
A short diagnostic for software engineers. Find whether visibility, interviews, system design, scope or leadership is the real thing holding you back, then take the first action that fixes it.
Senior iOS Interview Answer Card
A speakable answer format for senior iOS questions: the first sentence, the production answer, the trap, the pushback and the recovery line.
Swift Concurrency Interview Checklist
A senior-level Swift concurrency audit for cancellation, task ownership, actor reentrancy, MainActor boundaries, Sendable and flaky async tests.
Mobile System Design Prompt Pack
Mobile system design prompts with the constraints interviewers actually care about: offline state, sync, cache correctness, battery, memory and lifecycle recovery.
Mobile Architecture RFC Template
A mobile architecture RFC template that forces the decision to show constraints, rejected options, rollout risk, ownership and rollback.
Why trust the work
Written from work I have actually done.
Every framework comes from real systems, real teams and real career conversations, not generic advice.
15+ years across
- 15+ years
- Building production mobile software at scale
- 500+ interviews
- Conducted and reviewed on the screening side of hiring
- Staff & Architect
- Staff Mobile Engineer, Mobile Architect and Tech Lead
- Ex-Cisco & Mastercard
- Plus experience across Apple, Adobe and Visa
- Fintech & regulated
- Systems where correctness and security are not optional
- Published author
- Altitude and the iOS Interview Blueprint, from real work
Reader and client reviews
What changed for engineers who used the work.
Notes from readers and service clients, on what changed in their interviews, reviews and careers.
“The interview doesn't start when they ask the question. It starts when they challenge your answer. I kept preparing definitions; interviewers kept asking about trade-offs and failure modes. For the first time in years, I walked in prepared for the conversation, not just the questions.”
Mark, Staff Mobile Engineer (11 years) “The cards are about a page each but cover exactly what interviewers ask. I read the token-refresh section the night before and got almost that exact discussion in the loop.”
Ahmed, Mobile Engineer (7 years) “Instead of saying 'I'd use MVVM,' I started explaining why I'd choose it and when I wouldn't. That changed the entire conversation in my interviews.”
Rosa, iOS Engineer (4 years) “The hardest part was knowing how much detail to give. The short answers and live wording finally gave me a structure instead of talking until I ran out of ideas.”
Kevin, iOS Engineer (2 years) “During today’s session, we reviewed my CV in depth, discussed my career goals and next steps, and I received clear, actionable feedback tailored to my experience. I’m leaving with a stronger CV, a clearer direction, and several concrete improvements to implement.”
Brian A, Engineering CV audit (6 July 2026 · Topmate) “At the end, Mike gave me very clear and helpful feedback. He told me what I did well and what I should improve. I finished the session feeling more confident and much better prepared.”
Mario P, Live Coding & System Design (15 July 2026 · Topmate)
Reader and service reviews shared with permission.
About me
Mike Salari
Staff Mobile Engineer, Tech Lead, Technical Author
I have 15+ years building mobile software, including at Cisco and Mastercard, with experience across Apple, Adobe and Visa, and I have run 500+ technical interviews.
Salari is the system I wish I had earlier: books, essays, free tools and practical playbooks for getting noticed, passing interviews, thinking architecturally and growing into staff-level judgment. Mobile and iOS is the first deep specialization.
Read the full storyFAQ
Questions engineers ask before they start.
Who is Salari for?
Senior engineers, tech leads, architects, staff engineer candidates and software professionals looking to improve technical judgment, architecture skills, interviewing and career growth.
Are these books focused on iOS only?
No. While many examples come from mobile engineering, the concepts apply to software architecture, distributed systems, technical leadership, system design and engineering careers in general.
What makes these books different?
They are based on real engineering work, architecture reviews, production systems, technical interviews and career decisions, rather than theoretical examples.
Which book should I start with?
Start with the path that matches your current challenge: interviews, architecture, visibility, leadership or staff-level growth. The free tools and the path quiz point you to the right one.
Are the books suitable for Staff Engineer preparation?
Yes. Several books focus on systems thinking, architecture, communication, influence and technical decision-making expected from Staff Engineers.
Do I need management experience?
No. Most content is designed for individual contributors, senior engineers, architects and technical leads.
Are these books beginner friendly?
Most books target engineers with professional experience rather than complete beginners. They assume you already build software and want to grow into harder problems and bigger roles.
Are the frameworks based on real interviews?
Yes. The interview materials are based on real-world interview patterns, technical discussions and evaluation criteria observed across hundreds of engineering conversations.
Do the books cover Android, backend and other stacks, or only iOS?
The examples lean mobile, but the architecture, system design, leadership and visibility frameworks apply across iOS, Android, backend, full-stack and platform engineering.
How are the books delivered?
Each book is an instant PDF and EPUB download through Gumroad, with lifetime updates and a secure checkout.
The newsletter
Get the Developer Career Bottleneck Checklist.
A short diagnostic for software engineers: find whether visibility, interviews, system design, scope or leadership is the real thing holding you back, and what to do about it first.
No noise. Practical notes only.
Turn career confusion into a clear next move.
Find the bottleneck, pick the path, and use the books, tools and writing as the pressure changes.
