Dylan I. - Ruby on Rails Backend Engineer

North Walsham, United Kingdom

Experience

Apr 2023 - Present

2 years 9 months

Ruby on Rails Backend Engineer

Unosquare

Designed and deployed scalable APIs and services with Ruby on Rails, enabling the platform to process 50,000+ requests per minute with median latency below 150ms.
Implemented ActiveRecord models and optimized database queries for PostgreSQL and MongoDB.
Built background job workflows with Sidekiq and Redis, reliably processing 200,000+ jobs daily while keeping user-facing requests responsive.
Introduced Redis caching for high-traffic endpoints, reducing database load by 60% and improving API response times from 500ms to 120ms.
Enhanced CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions and Jenkins, cutting deployment time from two hours to 20 minutes and minimizing production rollout errors.
Deployed Rails applications on AWS (EC2, RDS, S3, ElastiCache), achieving 99.9% uptime Service Level Agreement.

Feb 2019 - Feb 2023

4 years 1 month

Backend Engineer

Liquid ICT

Developed enterprise-grade Rails applications with modular architectures, supporting sustained loads of 20,000–30,000 requests per minute with under 300ms response times.
Optimized PostgreSQL and SQL Server queries, reducing dashboard execution times from 6s to 500ms, improving user productivity.
Automated backend workflows (order processing, payments, user logs) using Rails services and ActiveJob, reducing manual effort by 35%.
Integrated Rails microservices with legacy enterprise systems, ensuring seamless synchronization across five critical business applications.
Established testing practices with RSpec and FactoryBot, raising test coverage from 20% to 75% and reducing production bugs by 40%.
Supported Heroku and Azure deployments while transitioning to AWS, enabling consistent weekly production releases with minimal downtime.

Nov 2015 - Jan 2019

3 years 3 months

Backend Developer

Elite

Built RESTful APIs with Rails and Sinatra, serving 15,000+ RPM with 99.5% uptime and improved reliability.
Implemented authentication and authorization flows using Devise and CanCanCan, reducing unauthorized access incidents by 90%.
Managed relational (MySQL) and non-relational (MongoDB) databases, implementing schema optimizations and indexes to improve query performance by 25–30%.
Collaborated with frontend developers on API contracts, reducing integration errors by 50% and improving feature delivery speed.
Optimized ActiveRecord queries for analytics/reporting, reducing execution latency from 3s to under 300ms, enabling near real-time dashboards.

Jul 2015 - Nov 2015

5 months

Backend Development Intern

Elite

Assisted in developing web features with Ruby on Rails and ERB templates, learning MVC design and RESTful development principles.
Wrote SQL queries for MySQL to support reporting requirements, improving accessibility for business users.
Gained experience with ActiveRecord associations and validations, building foundation for scalable Rails applications.
Supported bug fixing, QA testing, and documentation tasks, improving system reliability and developer onboarding.

Summary

Ruby on Rails Backend Developer with over 9 years of experience in designing, developing, and scaling web applications and APIs.

Strong expertise in Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, and ActiveRecord ORM, with proven skills in building RESTful APIs, microservices, and background job processing (Sidekiq, Resque, Delayed Job).

Experienced in relational (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server) and non-relational (MongoDB, Redis) databases.

Familiar with CI/CD pipelines, Docker, and AWS cloud deployments.

Recognized for optimizing system performance, improving application scalability, and enabling high availability in production environments.