Author and Technical Writer
Self-employed • Apr 2010 - Present
- Wrote books on Ruby on Rails and Elixir
- Wrote many of the Rails guides and some of the framework's documentation
- Writes extensively about Ruby on a personal blog
Lead Developer
Payments gateway company • Aug 2021 - Aug 2026
- Led the technical implementation of an acquisition of another payment gateway under an extremely tight deadline. That code has since processed over $4 billion in payments
- Handpicked as one of the technical leads for a major payments provider API integration into the platform. Shipped phase one in under three months and phase two before year's end
- Took ownership of the hosted payments stack, handling millions of transactions a month for household brands. Led a React rewrite of the payment forms, plus Apple Pay and Click to Pay (with Mastercard, Visa and Amex)
- Led development of a React design system adopted across every product, and of the React and JavaScript SDKs and their documentation
- Built multi-layered BIN blocking in the Gateway to stop fraudulent transactions, and drove a cross-team refactor of the payment plans code
- Hired eight developers across junior, mid-level and senior roles, and promoted three from within. Rebuilt the company's hiring and interview process
- Adopted GraphQL for the Merchant Dashboard API and mentored the team on the patterns
- Worked directly with banks to shape product roadmaps, and helped the wider team find where Claude Code fits into authoring and reviewing code
Senior Consultant
Self-employed • Feb 2021 - Aug 2021
- Technical consultant, helping teams ship quality software in Ruby, Rails, TypeScript and React
Senior Developer
Systematic review software company • May 2020 - Dec 2020
- Senior full-stack developer leading efforts across the codebase, from building a design system in React, CSS and TypeScript to working with a legacy Ruby on Rails application backed by PostgreSQL and Elasticsearch
- Worked on the rework of a major data extraction feature and was part of the team that launched and maintained its second version
- Led efforts to introduce a Support Developer role to triage incoming support requests and handle maintenance tasks
Teacher
Coding bootcamp • Dec 2019 - Apr 2020
- Taught junior developers HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Ruby
- Lead Educator for a cohort of 14 junior developers learning Ruby on Rails
- Worked in a small team to improve the curriculum across all campuses and bootcamps, focusing on computer science fundamentals, Ruby on Rails and JavaScript
Junior Engineering Program Lead
Employee feedback platform • Nov 2017 - Nov 2019
- Trained and mentored junior engineers in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, networking (DNS, HTTP), Ruby, Sinatra, Rails, Elixir, Ecto, Phoenix and AWS
- Wrote and taught my own curriculum, growing juniors into confident developers who contributed back to the company
Senior Rubyist / Mentor
Employee feedback platform • Aug 2016 - Aug 2017
Ruby / Rails Programmer
Online marketplace platform company • Jan 2015 - Jul 2016
Ruby and Go Programmer
Smart lighting company • Jul 2014 - Jan 2015
