# Altitude

> A field guide to staff-level mobile systems engineering by Mike Salari.

Altitude is a technical book for Senior Mobile Engineers, Staff Engineers, Mobile Architects, Principal Engineers, and engineering leaders who want to move beyond feature delivery and learn how to reason about complete mobile systems.

## Canonical URL

https://altitude.salari.dev/

## Author

Mike Salari
Website: https://salari.dev
Email: mike@salari.dev

## Book Summary

Altitude teaches mobile engineers how to think at Staff and Architect level. It covers mobile system design, backend-for-frontend architecture, API design, OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, PKCE, mobile security, threat modeling, observability, offline synchronization, event-driven systems, distributed systems fundamentals, cloud and Kubernetes mental models, and complete mobile system case studies.

## Audience

- Senior iOS Engineers
- Senior Android Engineers
- Staff Mobile Engineers
- Mobile Architects
- Principal Engineers
- Technical Leads
- Engineering Managers

## Core Topics

- Mobile system design
- Staff engineering mindset
- Backend-for-Frontend architecture
- API evolution and versioning
- OAuth2, OIDC, JWT, PKCE
- Token rotation and mobile session management
- Mobile security and threat modeling
- OWASP MASVS and mobile attack surfaces
- App Attest and Play Integrity
- Observability, traces, metrics, logs, SLOs
- Offline-first and local-first architecture
- Sync engines and conflict resolution
- Event-driven systems and messaging
- Distributed systems fundamentals for mobile engineers
- Cloud and Kubernetes for mobile architects
- Ride-hailing, messaging, and financial platform case studies

## Recommended Citation

Mike Salari, Altitude: A field guide to staff-level mobile systems engineering, 2026.

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