Rob Yurkowski (he/him)
Software Dev & Consultant
Summary
I've worked as a software consultant for 15 years, honing my initiative and becoming skilled at quickly picking up new languages, stacks, and domains. My clients have ranged from very tiny businesses up to Series-D-funded startups; I've both led teams and worked independently, reporting directly to the C-suite.
I'm a long-term thinker driven by impact and sustainability. I've architected, deployed, and run complex and distributed applications, championed code standards, and led process improvement. I've modernized legacy applications and have also kept some from falling over for years.
I've recently finished a long stint with an amazing client and right now I'm looking for an opportunity to work with a great team at a company that's making the lives of its customers better.
Featured Client Projects
Distributed System / Platform @ HoodQ
Architected HoodQ’s distributed, containerized system with inter-process messaging powered by RabbitMQ. Containerized multiple applications in the early days of Docker. Shifted operations to AWS Fargate, leading to a 5x reduction of infra costs. Wrote and maintained the company’s IaC scripts using Ansible and Amazon Cloudformation.
Co-managed ops and site reliability with CTO; led O11y improvement efforts.
Six years later, after internal needs changed, championed and led consolidation of applications and de-clouding to bare metal Hetzner machines, leading to a 20x reduction of infra costs. Wrote management and hardening scripts.
Application Development @ HoodQ
Gathered requirements and architected HoodQ’s Accounts service, its ETL pipeline, and a rewrite of its POI curation tools. Abstracted 3000 custom Ruby web-scraping classes into a block-based user-space visual tool, freeing up dev time and enabling curators to manage public data retrieval. Architected further enhancements of the ETL process, leading to the creation of business-critical internal tooling.
Maintained a legacy React front-end, worked with Lit-based WebComponents, and co-wrote and helped maintain the company’s APIs and SDK, which serve 1M+ requests per day.
Developer Experience @ HoodQ
Championed and led the extraction of duplicated front-end code to SSR components and created missing atoms/molecules, leading to a halving of development lead time on new features.
Built company’s internal CLI application; created and managed CI/CD pipeline; led code standards and created processes around PR review. Led adoption of agile philosophy and workflow. Established junior dev mentoring and pairing practices. Led extensive documentation efforts.
TMS @ K-Rae Transportation
Gathered requirements, architected, and built a workflow-customized transportation management system. Monitored and ran application as a solo dev with minimal downtime for 13 years on-going, migrating from Ruby on Rails v2 to v8 along the way.
Technical Advising @ Generations Midwifery Care
Provided technical advice and expertise. Built out analytics and marketing pipeline; wrote email marketing campaigns; coached team members; established appropriate security and backup regimes.
NB: In Canada, midwifery is highly regulated, integrated into the health care system, and requires a 4-year health sciences degree to practice.
Experience
Software Consultant @ Ridgeway Digital Inc.
Most recent engagements include acting as:
- Principal Development Consultant at HoodQ (6 years)
- Principal Development Consultant with K-Rae Transportation (13 years)
- Staff Development Consultant at FastAF (4 months)
Full-Stack Software Developer @ Dynamo
I did independent greenfield development for agency clients using RefineryCMS and Ruby on Rails.
Full-Stack Developer / Server Admin @ Looks Matter
Software Developer @ Zu
Education
Bachelor of Arts - English @ University of Regina
Technical Competencies
- Programming Languages
- Ruby Shell Javascript Lua PHP
- Databases
- PostgreSQL MySQL SQLite RabbitMQ Redis
- Frameworks / Libraries
- Ruby on Rails Hanami Sinatra Hotwire Turbo Stimulus React Alpine.js WebComponents dry-*
- Cloud Providers
- AWS (ECS, EC2, Elasticache, ELB, IAM, RDS, Route53, S3) Hetzner
- Web Technologies
- HTML CSS / SCSS OAuth OIDC
- Development Tools
- Ansible Docker / Compose nginx Caddy
- Marketing Tools
- ActiveCampaign Drip Mailchimp Mailgun Postmark
- CI+CD / Deployment
- Ansible CircleCI Docker Swarm Dokku Github Actions (GHA) Heroku Jenkins
- Monitoring
- Cloudwatch Elastic APM Rollbar Sentry / Glitchtip
- Software
- Authelia LLDAP Nextcloud Wordpress
Personal
- I co-founded RubyPunks, an invitational group working toward expanding inclusivity and opportunity within the Ruby community.
- I homestead with my wife and three kids. We raise chickens, rabbits, and bees.
- In my spare time, I enjoy woodworking and singing.