
Jesus Rugama
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Web Developer
Managua, Managua Department, Nicaragua
Toptal member since April 18, 2015
Jesus is a full-stack web developer based in Nicaragua. He has been coding since he was 13 and has been working remotely in small and mid-sized teams since 2010, building scalable and robust software. He loves to solve problems, learn new technologies, and make a difference in his clients' lives.
Portfolio
Experience
- Front-end - 10 years
- CSS - 10 years
- JavaScript - 8 years
- Laravel - 8 years
- Vue - 5 years
- React - 4 years
- Next.js - 3 years
- Nuxt.js - 3 years
Preferred Environment
Git, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), OS X, Windsurf
The most amazing...
...project I've worked on is a platform for media creators to share their work, as I was an integral part of my client's success and customer satisfaction.
Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer (Front-end)
Career Certified, LLC
- Contributed to the front-end migration from a monolithic PHP codebase to a high-performance distributed architecture, resulting in faster load times and reduced AWS infrastructure costs.
- Architected and deployed scalable infrastructure on AWS, including designing and provisioning infrastructure as code with Terraform and setting up CI/CD pipelines in GitLab to ensure seamless deployments across the entire tech stack.
- Engineered a scalable edge redirection system with dynamically generated redirect.json files served at the edge, and built a crawler that scanned legacy sites and populated thousands of redirect rules in Contentful, preserving SEO and user experience.
- Designed and implemented a production-grade authentication system using Cognito, AWS Verified Permissions (AVP), pre-token Lambda, and custom authorizers to support url to user access.
- Elevated to mandatory code approver alongside the architect, responsible for maintaining architectural standards and code quality across the engineering team.
Software Engineer
Flipside
- Created a Chrome extension by inserting a sidebar app for users to comment about the sites they are navigating.
- Migrated the site from Firebase to Supabase because Firebase queries were limited and expensive.
- Improved the app performance, decreasing the initial loading time from 2 seconds to less than 400 milliseconds.
Software Engineer
Dropified
- Extended the Chrome extension, adding scraping scripts for new sites and maintaining existing code.
- Deployed a ComfyUI service to process images using stable diffusion.
- Maintained and added new features to the Django API and React dashboard.
Software Engineer
Festive Screen
- Developed the initial product from scratch, including payment processing and authentication.
- Deployed a Lambda service for video encoding using ffmpeg.
- Built a TV app for LG’s marketplace, integrating an OTP system for secure access.
Software Engineer
Atmosphere
- Migrated the marketing site from an old Laravel site to Nuxt (Vue), improving its performance by 3x.
- Created editable videos for the users to create local advertisements in their businesses.
- Integrated Salesforce into the marketing site to improve conversion rates.
- Used Prismic as a headless CMS and built a design system to display the available sections for CMS users.
- Built new endpoints to the Laravel API using test-driven development (TDD) and best practices.
PHP and Laravel Back-end Developer
Givelify
- Built a system integrating multiple 3rd party APIs with the local DB.
- Used Elasticsearch to match users with typos on their names from the 3rd party APIs.
- Reduced the integration setup time from 24 hours to minutes.
Web Developer
Post.Pro
- Built a tool for media creators to share their work.
- Created a customizable player for the users to be able to embed their videos keeping their brand colors.
- Integrated Stripe to handle the payments.
- Removed the pagination links and implemented infinite scrolling with JS instead.
- Used Amazon Accelerate to improve AWS upload speed.
Partner
Affinity Share
- Created a Stripe extension to handle referral-based discounts.
- Created a tracking tool for easy website set up to track referrals between users and conversions.
- Created a GraphQL API to track the conversions and create the Stripe discounts according to the number of referred users.
- Created a Nuxt app for the SaaS owners to check their customers' activity.
Lead Developer
Motion Array
- Created a collaboration system that includes real-time messaging.
- Created an editable portfolio tool. A demonstration of it can be viewed at youtube.com/watch?v=ImXSObmxkkM.
- Improved the video upload by moving the video transcoding to the background so that users can browse the site and be notified when the transcoding is done.
- Added HLS streaming to the reviews to create video quality lists and segmented loading.
- Changed the payment structure multiple times, which included removing an old credit-based download system.
- Integrated Algolia to improve the marketplace search engine speed.
- Built a subscription-based marketplace for video producers. Sellers can upload videos, templates, and music resources and add them to the product catalog.
- Changed the payment model from limited credits to monthly.
Contract Web Developer
American Driver Network
- Developed a recruiting network of 500 sites using a centralized API.
- Created a custom multi-tenant content manager system for clients to manage their profiles.
- Integrated Laravel into WordPress for better coding under an MVC pattern, keeping the ease of use and setup of WordPress themes and plugins.
- Optimized parts of our main site (the front end and data layer) to improve the load time. This involved creating a plugin to measure the speed on different parts of the site.
Owner/CTO
Spark Apps
- Managed company projects and recruited and trained talent.
Owner/Lead Developer
Arumart Studio
- Developed a proprietary CMS and MVC framework to use in local clients' small site development.
- Worked with clients from Spain, Mexico, Panama, and the US in the development of a wide variety of web applications.
- Trained junior developers to use the best practices in development.
Creative Designer
DDB Advertising
- Developed for advertising campaigns and did graphic design for leading local companies.
Experience
Post.Pro
Skills used: Laravel, Stripe, Vue.js, and CSS.
Motion Array
I created a video review and collaboration app, which you can see in action at https://motionarray.com/review, as well as a portfolio builder tool (https://motionarray.com/portfolio). I also improved the upload/transcoding, integrated Algolia to improve the search engine experience, and restyled the site.
Skills used: Vue.js, Vuex, Laravel, JS, CSS, Node.js, Stripe
American Driver Network
https://truckdriverjobsinamerica.com/Musejam
End It Movement - Donation Game
Intactics SOL
Toptal React Academy
Education
Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing & Advertising
American University - Managua, Nicaragua
Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering
National University of Engineering - Managua, Nicaragua
Technical Degree in Programming
Latin American Computing Institute - Managua, Nicaragua
Certifications
Stripe Certified Professional Developer
Stripe
Stripe Certified Associate Developer
Stripe
Certified Laravel Developer
Certifications for Laravel
Toptal React Academy Graduate
Toptal, LLC
Skills
Libraries/APIs
REST APIs, Node.js, Vue 2, Vuex, React, jQuery, Vue, Stripe API, PayPal API, Google Maps, Stripe, API Development, React Redux, OpenAI API
Tools
Stripe Checkout, GitHub, NGINX, Adobe Photoshop, Git, Figma, Terraform, Adobe Illustrator, Apache, Bitbucket, Jira, ComfyUI, Windsurf, Stencil.js, AWS Command Line Interface (CLI), Amazon Cognito
Languages
PHP 7, PHP 5, JavaScript, PHP, CSS, SQL, TypeScript, SCSS, Less, Sass, GraphQL, HTML, ECMAScript (ES6), XML, HTML5, Python, C++
Frameworks
Laravel, Bootstrap 3, Nuxt.js, Next.js, Express.js, Tailwind CSS, PHPUnit, CakePHP, Bootstrap, Jest, Vue SSR, Redux, Chrome, Django, JSON Web Tokens (JWT)
Paradigms
Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Test-driven Development (TDD), Responsive Web Design (RWD)
Storage
MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Databases
Platforms
Amazon Web Services (AWS), AWS Lambda, Contentful, OS X, WordPress, Craft CMS, Docker, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Firebase, DigitalOcean
Other
Back-end Development, Full-stack, Front-end, Web Development, Marketplaces, Architecture, Full-stack Development, APIs, System Integration, Integration Testing, Headless Software, Software Architecture, Supabase, Content Management Systems (CMS), Serverless, Headless CMS, Web Components, Sagas, Laravel Forge, Chrome Extensions, Storybook, WordPress Multi-user, API Integration, Vite, Web Scraping, Stripe Payments, WebSockets, Coding, RAG Systems, Authentication, Knowledge Bases, Amazon Bedrock, Migration, Distributed Software
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