macOS Swift Developer

IMPORTANT NOTE: MUST HAVE MACOS SWIFT DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCE AND BE BASED IN THE UK.

Take ownership of the native Orchard application that runs on our customers' Macs. UK, fully remote.

About Orchard

Orchard is a SaaS security and compliance platform that helps organisations keep their Apple devices secure, up to date and audit-ready.

We continuously manage macOS updates, application patching and essential security controls, helping solve the problems of outdated software, security drift and inconsistent compliance without relying on manual intervention or a particular mobile device management platform.

Orchard isn’t an MDM and doesn’t aim to replace one. We complement existing device management tools by helping organisations achieve extremely high levels of patching and security compliance, areas where traditional MDM platforms can struggle.

We’re an early-stage company with a team of around 10 people, and we’re now moving from product development and launch preparation into our initial commercial growth phase. It’s a good time to join if you want to have a meaningful influence on both a product and the company building it.

The role

We’re looking for a macOS Swift Developer to take ownership of the ongoing development of the native Orchard application that runs on our customers’ Macs.

The initial version of the application is complete. Your role will be to build on that foundation: improving its reliability, fixing bugs, delivering new features from our roadmap and maintaining the application as Orchard grows.

We also want you to bring your own ideas. You’ll have the opportunity to influence how the application evolves, identify areas where we can make it better and contribute to technical decisions rather than simply working through a predefined backlog.

This is a hands-on development role with significant ownership of an important part of the Orchard product.

What you'll be working on

You’ll be responsible for the Swift side of the Orchard macOS application, with a particular focus on:

Developing and maintaining the macOS application functionality that discovers installed software and supports installation and patching workflows.

• Building Swift components that consume configuration and instructions from Orchard APIs and translate them into appropriate application behaviour on the Mac.
• Developing the macOS-side functionality, notifications and system integrations used to support software updates and user-facing enforcement flows.
• Building Swift functionality that interprets security and compliance requirements from Orchard, inspects relevant macOS state, and reports or responds to that state within the application.
• Working with configuration profiles and other management settings to understand how a managed Mac is configured and how that configuration affects Orchard’s behaviour.
• Developing and maintaining privileged and background functionality required for installation, patching and other system-level operations.
• Designing secure communication between the main application, background processes and privileged components.
• Building user-facing interfaces using SwiftUI and relevant macOS frameworks.
• Integrating the macOS application with Orchard’s APIs and ensuring information is exchanged reliably between the device and wider platform.
• Implementing secure device identity and authentication mechanisms, including Keychain-backed credentials, cryptographic key pairs and token-based authentication.
• Improving the reliability, performance, security and maintainability of the existing application.
• Investigating and resolving bugs, including issues involving macOS APIs, permissions, processes and system behaviour.
• Delivering new macOS functionality in line with our product roadmap.
• Identifying opportunities to improve the application and bringing new technical ideas to the team.
• Maintaining the application as macOS, Orchard and our customers’ requirements evolve.
• Ensuring the application and its components are appropriately signed, notarised, entitled and prepared for reliable deployment to customer devices.

You’ll report to the Engineering Lead and work closely with our web development team. A significant part of Orchard’s functionality relies on communication between the macOS application and the wider Orchard platform, so you’ll work closely with other engineers on APIs, data models, authentication and the behaviour that connects device-side functionality with the Orchard service.

What we're looking for

We’re looking for someone with strong experience developing native applications for macOS using Swift. This role requires a solid understanding of macOS as a platform, including how applications interact with the operating system, managed device configuration, security boundaries and system-level services.

• Strong Swift development skills and a good understanding of modern Swift development practices.
• Hands-on experience developing, debugging and running native Swift applications on macOS.
• Experience building user interfaces with SwiftUI, with an understanding of AppKit where macOS-specific functionality requires it.
• A good understanding of the macOS application lifecycle and relevant Apple frameworks and APIs.
• Experience working with application permissions, entitlements, sandboxing and other macOS security mechanisms.
• Experience with application signing, Hardened Runtime, notarisation and the processes involved in distributing software on macOS.
• Experience creating or working with privileged helpers and LaunchDaemons, and an understanding of how privileged and background components should be designed, secured and managed on macOS.
• An understanding of inter-process communication on macOS, particularly where applications communicate with privileged or background components.
• An understanding of configuration profiles and managed Macs, including how device management configuration can influence application and system behaviour.
• Experience working with the macOS Keychain, including securely creating, storing, retrieving and managing credentials and cryptographic material.
• An understanding of public/private key pairs, including generating, storing and using keys securely for device identity, signing or authentication.
• An understanding of authentication concepts such as bearer tokens, including how tokens should be acquired, stored, transmitted, refreshed and protected within a native application.
• Experience integrating native applications with authenticated web services and APIs.
• Experience with asynchronous and concurrent programming in Swift.
• Strong command-line skills, including writing and maintaining shell scripts to support application behaviour, diagnostics, installation and system-level workflows.
• Experience using Git and GitHub, including branches, pull requests and code review workflows.
• The ability to investigate complex problems across application and system boundaries and work independently towards practical solutions.
• Strong attention to detail, particularly when working with privileged operations, cryptographic material, authentication, system-level APIs and functionality that must behave reliably across a large number of devices.
• The confidence to make technical decisions and take ownership of your work.
• A proactive approach to identifying improvements rather than waiting to be told exactly what to build.
• The ability to work effectively with other developers, particularly where native application functionality interacts closely with web services and APIs.

Experience with device management, macOS security tooling or enterprise Mac environments would be useful, but we don’t expect you to have worked as a Mac administrator or security engineer. What matters is being able to understand how these technologies affect the software you’re building.

You don’t need to match one particular career path or have experience with every technology we use. What matters most is that you understand macOS development, are comfortable building production software in Swift, and can grow into genuine technical ownership of the Orchard macOS application.

What success looks like

Over your first 6 to 12 months, we’d expect you to become a confident owner of the Swift application and an important part of Orchard’s engineering team.

You’ll have developed a strong understanding of the existing application, improved its reliability and quality, and be consistently delivering new functionality from the product roadmap. You’ll be resolving issues effectively, contributing your own ideas and helping us make good technical decisions about how the macOS application should evolve.

Why Orchard?

Orchard is tackling a difficult and important problem. Organisations can have sophisticated device management systems in place and still struggle to keep Macs consistently patched and compliant.

We’re building Orchard specifically to close that gap.

Our approach includes discovering applications on devices rather than relying on IT teams to pre-select them, automatically responding to critical security patches, enforcing and monitoring security controls, and providing workflows around security incidents rather than simply presenting another dashboard.

We’re building a commercial, enterprise-grade product designed specifically for security, while keeping it straightforward for IT teams to deploy and operate.

Because we’re still a small, early-stage team, you’ll have the opportunity to make a genuine impact on the product and help shape how it develops.

How we work

Orchard is a UK-based company. Our team is distributed across the UK and combines expertise in software development, product management, leadership and operations.

We’re friendly, expert, professional and focused on achieving meaningful outcomes. We value people and their ability to grow, doing excellent work, and remaining open-minded enough to continually improve.

This is a full-time, permanent position. We’re looking for someone who wants to become part of the Orchard team and take long-term ownership of an important part of our product.