I've been building with Rails for a long time, including launching and scaling startups. I love e-commerce, platforms, payments, local businesses, and more recently been working with integrating AI technologies into products.
Construction Datafax: 2001 - 2004
My first job was at a small technology company near where I graduated high school in Central Alabama. Construction Datafax was an information company that gathered information about construction work and sold custom reports to construction contractors.
At a small company doing a lot, I was tasked with all sorts of various technical tasks including:
Windows NT network administration
Linux server administration
End user technical support
Administering weird stuff like FoxPRO databases and fax servers
Web, XML, and .NET development
Freelance Web Developer: 2004 - 2010
I decided to focus on web development, with Ruby on Rails as a key catalyst, using it to launch startups in 2005 before version 1.0. During this time I learned a lot about software development and building web products. I worked on a variety of projects including:
Building the technology for an eBay consignment store startup, including integration with eBay via APIs and a storefront module for use with in-person customers
A crowdfunding platform by a non-profit organization
A collaboration platform founded by a former Microsoft executive
Some projects bringing the discipline and structure of Rails to rescue PHP spaghetti code
A variety of other startups, e-commerce projects, content-oriented projects, multimedia, and more
MyPizza.com / Slice, Technical Co-founder / VP Eng: 2010 - 2017
In 2010 I moved to NYC where I met Ilir Sela who was starting MyPizza.com which was later renamed Slice. I joined as founding engineer and built the product and managed all the technology for the first four years, and then as the company started to grow I stayed on through Series B of VC funding and substantial growth of the company as VP of Engineering.
This was a key time for me as building the technology from scratch and creating the team and everything was a tremendous experience. Being able to see how decisions played out over such a long time and through such scale gave me a whole new perspective on building systems and startups.
Full stack Rails development to build all the technology needed to launch and operate MyPizza.com
Management of the infrastructure, including AWS, servers, costs, and more
Upon receiving VC funding, manage the growth of the team
Managing QA and DevOps/CI/CD processes
Partnerships and integrations with Facebook, Google, and other partners
Kennedy Technology Macedonia, Owner: 2018 - 2023
In 2018 I started a software development firm based in Macedonia. After working in a series of startups I had the desire to gather and train a team of full stack Rails engineers to work with. For over five years we worked on a series of projects and startups.
Opened a local business entity and physical office in the Balkans, and staffed it with a team that varied between 8 and 10 members of Rails developers together with a few designers and product support / QA staff.
Product delivery team worked together to build and launch multiple projects, including e-commerce, marketplace, healthcare and COVID/vaccination response, "headless CMS" content management systems, and internal projects.
Clients included startups, non-profits, and larger businesses.
Technologies used include Rails, Hotwire, Next.js, React, Tailwind, Git/GitHub, CI/CD with automated tests and GitHub Actions, AWS, Render, Heroku, and more.
We produced and participated in multiple events, some in coordination with other local organizations, centered around technology education, helping people enter the technology field, and career development.
