Founder @ RealPic · Senior Software Engineer II @ Mercury
AndrewLevine.
I design complex systems that stay secure and fast as they scale.
Full stack engineer drawn to complex system design, security, and making things fast at scale. I love learning new technologies, pairing with other engineers, and building systems that are well-structured and easy to maintain.
years shipping production software
product built solo, from schema to the App Store
teams brought along on a codebase-wide rollout
hospitals running software I built
Then I built my own company: RealPic.
An iOS camera that proves a photo is real: taken on a genuine iPhone, at the moment it says, and never edited. Every photo gets a QR code anyone can scan to check it. I designed it, built every piece of it, talked to the people it's for, and shipped it, as a team of one.
App preview · iOS
The journey so far
Feb 2026
An empty repo and a hard question
AI can generate a convincing photo of anything. How do you prove a picture is real? I made the first commit and decided to answer it at the source: the camera.
Early on
Talking to people before building for them
I ran user interviews and focus groups to find who needed proof most, then cut the app down to their use cases.
Spring 2026
Building the chain of trust
A key in the Secure Enclave certified by Apple App Attest, a hash chain over camera frames, and server-side checks for screen recaptures, so a fake has to beat all of them at once.
Apr 2026
Getting it reviewed
I put the system through a security review and fixed the critical findings before launch: tighter upload windows, encrypted storage keys, and validated metadata.
Launch
Launched on the App Store
Shipped with a free tier and a premium subscription through StoreKit 2, plus a public verify site, an admin console for moderation, and Sign in with Apple.
Jun 2026
Making it work on one bar of signal
I rebuilt uploads around a durable background queue and a two-phase upload, so the QR code is ready before the full-resolution photo finishes uploading.
What I built it with
- Swift / SwiftUI
- Secure Enclave
- App Attest
- StoreKit 2
- Express + Zod
- Prisma + Postgres
- Trigger.dev
- Cloudflare Workers + R2
- Next.js
- React admin
Try to fake a RealPic
Every upload has to pass four independent checks, in order. Pick an attack and see which one catches it.
- Genuine device — passedApp Attest key in the Secure Enclave signs a fresh, single-use challenge
- Signed hashes — passedImage, depth and preview hashes all sit inside that one signature
- Frame chain — passedA hash chain over ~6 fps camera frames replays to the signed head
- Real scene — passedMotion, focus, gyro, screen-pattern and depth-planarity score ≥ 70
All four checks agree. The photo gets a QR code anyone can scan to verify it.
Six years of building systems that hold up.
From a hospital API gateway to a Haskell bank to my own startup, the thread is the same: thoughtful system design, security, and performance under real load.
2026 — Present · New York, NY
Founder at RealPic
My own company. I took a photo-verification app from database schema to API to client to launch on the App Store as the only engineer, making every architectural and product call along the way.
- Swift
- Secure Enclave
- Image processing
- Cloudflare
- Postgres
- Prisma
- Express
- Node
- Next.js
- Trigger.dev
- 01Founded RealPic and shipped it to production solo, end to end: schema, API, iOS client, and App Store release.
- 02Owned a TypeScript backend (Node, Express, Zod) on Prisma and Postgres, with async jobs on Trigger.dev, edge logic and rate limiting on Cloudflare Workers, a Next.js marketing site, and a React admin app.
- 03Built a secure image pipeline: uploads that survive slow cellular networks, App Attest attestation and assertion flows, depth processing and hash mapping, and a photo Worker for serving and caching.
- 04Ran user interviews and focus groups to find product-market fit and focus the app on its users' real use cases.
Pick a route. Send it.
I spend my evenings on climbing walls, so my skills live on one too. Choose a route to see how it climbs, or tap any hold to see where I've used it.
Sharing the ocean with the animals who live there.
I've loved animals for as long as I can remember, and scuba diving lets me meet them on their terms. Tiger sharks on a sand flat, humpbacks with their calves, manatees in a spring. Every dive reminds me how much life is down there, and how much it's worth protecting.
Where I've been diving
From week-long liveaboards to day trips off Florida. Tap a pin.
Ecuador
Galápagos Islands
A liveaboard through one of the most protected marine reserves on Earth, where the animals have no reason to be afraid of you.
- Hammerhead schools
- Sea lions
- Marine iguanas
Sharks deserve better PR
Most of my favorite dives have been with sharks. They're curious, careful, and essential to healthy reefs, and they're disappearing far faster than they can recover.
Give wildlife its space
The best encounters happen when the animal chooses to come to you. No touching, no chasing, and dive operators that put the animals first.
Protect the places we visit
Places like the Galápagos show what a protected ocean looks like. I want more of the ocean to look like that.
The depth gauge on the right has been logging your dive this whole time. Keep descending. The contact section is at the bottom.
Other things that keep me curious.
Getting up in front of strangers.
I perform stand-up. It's good practice at reading a room, explaining ideas clearly, and editing ruthlessly.
University of Pennsylvania
B.S.E., Mechanical Engineering & Applied Mechanics, 2020. Came for the physics, stayed for the algorithms.
- Senior Design Judge's Choice
- Commure hackathon winner
Prefer a terminal? Same.
Everything above, as a CLI. Try help, dives, or something you probably shouldn't.
You made it all the way down. Let's talk.
Whether it's a role, a hard system design problem, or a dive trip I should add to the map, my inbox is open.