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Noah Kochanowicz
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Toronto, ON, Canada
Toptal member since May 31, 2022
Bio
Noah is a senior software developer with nearly a decade of experience in Ruby and PHP. He loves to focus on the little things that will make massive improvements to the users' day-to-day. His project experience includes eCommerce, social media, and internal tooling.
Portfolio
Wealthsimple
Ruby on Rails (RoR), PostgreSQL, React, React Native, Git, Ruby, JavaScript...
RewardOps
Ruby on Rails (RoR), PostgreSQL, Ember.js, Git, Ruby, JavaScript...
LunchTray
Ruby on Rails (RoR), PostgreSQL, Cordova, jQuery, C#, Git, Ruby, JavaScript...
Experience
- Git - 9 years
- PHP - 9 years
- MySQL - 9 years
- Agile Software Development - 8 years
- PostgreSQL - 8 years
- Ruby - 8 years
- Ruby on Rails (RoR) - 8 years
- Amazon EC2 - 3 years
Preferred Environment
MacOS, Vendor Independent Messaging (VIM), Git, Ruby, PHP, PostgreSQL, MySQL
The most amazing...
...thing I've worked on for my own company is a school lunch menu app used weekly by thousands of families in three states.
Work Experience
Senior Software Engineer
2021 - PRESENT
Wealthsimple
- Led a project to improve our internal tooling for processing transferring accounts out of Wealthsimple. The improvements led to nearly 40 hours in operation time saved per month.
- Co-led an internal study group to help new organization members learn Ruby and Ruby on Rails.
- Led a project for one of our microservices to support unifying our applications into one app.
- Participated in an internal mentorship program as a mentor for two more junior engineers.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), PostgreSQL, React, React Native, Git, Ruby, JavaScript, Agile Software Development, Component-based Architecture, Devise, RSpec, Vim Text Editor, JSON, SQL, GraphQL, REST, API Integration, REST APIs, B2C
Software Developer
2017 - 2021
RewardOps
- Designed and built the foundational architecture for a new integrations system which reduced the time to make most integrations by 50% and took the time to modify settings from over an hour to just a few minutes.
- Acted as a team lead for over a year, focusing on building integrations for the launch of Air Canada's Aeroplan loyalty program relaunch.
- Designed and implemented a new inventory management system to support our complex system of program segmentation. Collaborated with our lead architect on this project.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), PostgreSQL, Ember.js, Git, Ruby, JavaScript, Agile Software Development, Devise, RSpec, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Vim Text Editor, CSS, JSON, HTML, SQL, SCSS, Haml, REST, API Integration, REST APIs, B2B
Owner and Developer
2016 - 2017
LunchTray
- Took over the company after it was spun off from my previous employer, Agape Red. Took the product from two to five school districts in one year. At its peak, it was used by over 10,000 families weekly.
- Built a C# application for Windows computers to easily import school's nutritional information from Nutrikids, a commonly used resource for menu planning.
- Created a mobile and web app for online ordering in schools. Students were able to order ahead of time and skip the lines in the cafeteria.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), PostgreSQL, Cordova, jQuery, C#, Git, Ruby, JavaScript, Bootstrap, DigitalOcean, Devise, RSpec, Ruby on Rails 4, Amazon EC2, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Vim Text Editor, CSS, JSON, HTML, SQL, SCSS, Haml, REST, API Integration, REST APIs
Software Consultant and Developer
2013 - 2016
Agape Red (OpsCompass)
- Developed a social networking application for football coaches and utilized Neo4j to create networking recommendations and determine mutual acquaintances.
- Contributed to Agape Red's internal project management tool, Heartbeat. I improved the experience for our clients by strengthening our time-tracking integrations and adding more ways for clients to give feedback.
- Contributed to Red Basket, a crowdfunding platform funded by Woodmen of the World. I built additional reporting tools for administrators and worked with the design team to improve the user experience.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails 4, PHP, Laravel, PostgreSQL, DigitalOcean, Git, MySQL, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Agile Software Development, jQuery, Bootstrap, Kohana, Devise, RSpec, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Vim Text Editor, CSS, JSON, HTML, SQL, SCSS, Haml, REST, API Integration, REST APIs, B2B
Experience
ISTA Auth and Admin Portal
https://auth.istaonline.orgA Rails-based application connected to an existing PHP application. This application was created as part of ongoing freelance work with the International Society for Technology in Arthroplasty (ISTA).
The entire application was built without a framework and lacked modern security and organizational patterns that come with something like Laravel or Rails. This put data in a vulnerable position and made making changes very difficult.
With the new auth and admin portal, I salvaged the existing business logic for end users, working perfectly fine but putting it all behind a new authentication flow. The users noticed very little difference but still could use the features they were used to.
For the admins, I was able to rebuild sections of the existing admin portal page-by-page in the new system and fall back to the existing system for things I had not yet moved over. This new system allowed me to build features 3x as fast as in the old system, integrate unit and integration tests and leave the code in a cleaner state for future developers.
The entire application was built without a framework and lacked modern security and organizational patterns that come with something like Laravel or Rails. This put data in a vulnerable position and made making changes very difficult.
With the new auth and admin portal, I salvaged the existing business logic for end users, working perfectly fine but putting it all behind a new authentication flow. The users noticed very little difference but still could use the features they were used to.
For the admins, I was able to rebuild sections of the existing admin portal page-by-page in the new system and fall back to the existing system for things I had not yet moved over. This new system allowed me to build features 3x as fast as in the old system, integrate unit and integration tests and leave the code in a cleaner state for future developers.
Pyrex | Strongly Typed Ruby
https://github.com/ActsAsAnAntipattern/pyrexStrong typing has always had a special place in my heart from my brief encounters with Visual Basic and C#. Without considering performance, I wanted to challenge myself to build a DSL in Ruby to add strong typing.
Borrowing from the testing framework, RSpec, I settled on mimicking the structure of a method declaration by using blocks, with arguments passed being the method arguments.
Borrowing from the testing framework, RSpec, I settled on mimicking the structure of a method declaration by using blocks, with arguments passed being the method arguments.
Skills
Libraries/APIs
jQuery, Devise, REST APIs, React
Tools
Git, RSpec, Vim Text Editor
Languages
Ruby, PHP, HTML, SQL, SCSS, Haml, CSS, JavaScript, C#, GraphQL
Frameworks
Ruby on Rails (RoR), Bootstrap, Laravel, Kohana, Ruby on Rails 4, React Native, Ember.js
Paradigms
REST, Agile Software Development, B2B, B2C
Platforms
MacOS, DigitalOcean, Amazon EC2
Storage
PostgreSQL, JSON, MySQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3)
Other
API Integration, Component-based Architecture, Cordova
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