All Experience

Ruby on Rails

Scalable backend architecture for secure, high-performance applications

RubyRuby on RailsActiveRecordMySQLPostgreSQLRedisRESTful APIsGraphQLDevisePunditSidekiqDelayed JobAction CableWebSocketsRSpecFactoryBotRuboCopDockerAWS (EC2, RDS, S3)HerokuCI/CDProduction SupportSecurity MaintenanceQA

Ruby on Rails

Overview

For over 7 years, I've architected and maintained Ruby on Rails backends powering web and mobile applications across 7+ shipped products spanning Rails 6.1 through Rails 8.1, plus a headless Ruby clinical-data pipeline. My work has primarily focused on healthcare and research platforms where security, performance, and long-term maintainability are critical.

Rails has allowed me to rapidly develop structured systems while ensuring scalability, clean architecture, and production-grade reliability.

My Rails work often includes the surrounding ownership needed to keep systems running: database setup, environment configuration, deployment support, security patching, QA, production fixes, and mentoring other developers through established application patterns.

In production

  • Multi-year clinical-research platforms: Rails 7+ backends powering an iPad-delivered aphasia-rehabilitation study and an offline-first psychiatric research mobile app. Each serves 100-500 enrolled participants, 50-100 clinicians, and 10-20 administrators across multi-year deployments, with PaperTrail audit trails and CanCanCan permission trees spanning five user roles.
  • Child-development research PWA backend: Rails 7 admin app + JSON API with ULID primary keys, mixed deterministic / non-deterministic Active Record encryption per field, DelayedJob notification scheduling with Twilio SMS, and a 5-minute cron-managed worker keep-alive.
  • Patient-education platform: Rails 8.1 monolith for a chronic-kidney- disease education site serving hundreds of monthly visitors. A slug-integrity content check runs at boot to prevent missing-content deploys, and a deliberate zero-server-PII privacy posture keeps visitor personalization in browser cookies only.
  • Pediatric RCT platform: Rails 7.2 with the study protocol expressed as readable Ruby predicates (cohort × phase × time-pacing logic) and content- management filesystem-mirroring callbacks coupling DB rows to on-disk HAML templates.
  • Industry directory: Rails 8.1 monolith with an Active Record encryption migration (SHA-1 fallback for legacy ciphertexts) and a package-audit- driven bi-monthly patch cadence with structured before/after audit logs.
  • Production maintenance: recurring security updates, dependency audit remediation, deployment support, database/environment setup, and production debugging across active and legacy Rails applications.

Problems Solved with Rails

1. Scalable Backend Architecture

I design backend systems using MVC architecture and service-oriented design principles to:

  • Keep business logic organized and testable
  • Prevent technical debt as complexity grows
  • Support hundreds of concurrent clinicians and research participants
  • Enable safe, rapid feature iteration

By applying SOLID principles and domain-driven structure, applications remain maintainable over time.

2. Secure Data Handling

In healthcare environments, data security is non-negotiable. I implemented:

  • Two-factor authentication (2FA)
  • Email verification workflows
  • Role-based authorization (Pundit)
  • Secure session management
  • CSRF, XSS, and SQL injection prevention
  • Encrypted credentials and secure headers

Ensuring sensitive data remains protected while preserving usability.

3. High-Performance APIs

I architected RESTful and GraphQL APIs to:

  • Serve web and mobile applications
  • Support API versioning
  • Implement token-based authentication (JWT/OAuth)
  • Optimize JSON serialization
  • Enforce rate limiting and CORS policies

These APIs provided stable contracts between frontend and backend systems.

4. Database & Performance Optimization

As systems scale, performance bottlenecks emerge. I addressed:

  • N+1 query elimination with eager loading
  • Indexing strategies for faster queries
  • Read replicas for high-read workloads
  • Query profiling and optimization
  • Redis-based caching strategies

These improvements significantly reduced latency and improved stability.

5. Asynchronous & Real-Time Systems

Modern applications require background and real-time capabilities. I built:

  • Background processing with Sidekiq and Delayed Job
  • Webhook architectures with retry logic
  • Real-time updates via Action Cable
  • Multi-layer caching strategies

Ensuring responsive user experiences without blocking core application flows.

6. Production Ownership & Maintenance

Long-lived Rails systems need more than feature delivery. I support:

  • Deployment and environment configuration
  • Database setup and production data workflows
  • Dependency upgrades and security patching
  • Full-application QA before release
  • Production bug investigation and remediation
  • Code review, mentoring, and technical handoffs

This keeps client systems reliable after launch and reduces delivery risk when applications evolve over multiple years.

Why Rails?

Rails provides convention-driven structure, strong security defaults, and rapid development capabilities, making it ideal for building scalable, secure backend systems with long-term sustainability.