Alex Katkova, Developer in San Francisco, CA, United States
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Alex Katkova

Verified Expert  in Engineering

Software Developer

Location
San Francisco, CA, United States
Toptal Member Since
July 13, 2022

Alex is a senior Ruby on Rails developer with extensive experience building APIs, working with and extending third-party integrations, and building proof of concept software. She is pragmatic and detail-oriented, leverages the right tool for the job, and delivers projects on time.

Code ReviewBack-endSaaSAPI DocumentationGitHubRubyRuby on Rails 5Ruby on Rails (RoR)RSpecSidekiqRedisREST APIsFull-stackGitAgile

Portfolio

Thanx
Ruby, Ruby on Rails 5, Heroku, ActiveAdmin, Ruby on Rails (RoR), APIs, Git...
CheckMate
Ruby on Rails 5, Ember.js, Git, MySQL, GitHub, Back-end, Full-stack, HTML5...
Google
Java, JavaScript, API Documentation, Code Review

Experience

Ruby - 6 yearsRuby on Rails 5 - 5 yearsMySQL - 5 yearsActiveAdmin - 5 yearsTwilio API - 2 yearsSnowflake - 1 yearLooker - 1 year

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

MacOS, Atom

The most amazing...

...project I've completed is an SMS chatbot integrated with the Thanx platform, allowing users to access Thanx without a mobile application.

Work Experience

Senior Software Engineer

2017 - 2022
Thanx
  • Architected and built Thanx's first public API, allowing the company to acquire customers that were looking for a custom experience.
  • Led the back-end component of an online ordering integration with OLO, allowing Thanx to expand the reach of the product and leverage a new source of revenue.
  • Worked extensively with customer success to build and refine internal tooling via ActiveAdmin.
  • Wrote a chatbot powered by the Twilio API that allowed a user access to their Thanx data via SMS.
  • Led an upgrade to integration with Visa's SOAP API.
Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails 5, Heroku, ActiveAdmin, Ruby on Rails (RoR), APIs, Git, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Stripe, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL, Twilio, GitHub, Amazon Web Services (AWS), REST APIs, Back-end, Full-stack, API Integration, New Relic, HTML5, Upgrades, CSS3, RSpec, Sidekiq, Devise, Elasticsearch, Ruby Gems, Redis, Test-driven Development (TDD), API Documentation, Mailchimp, Mandrill, HTML, Estimations, CSS, Code Review, Agile, React, SaaS

Software Engineer

2014 - 2016
CheckMate
  • Contributed to a messaging web app designed for hotel employees to interact with customers.
  • Developed an integration with Oracle Opera property management system.
  • Built a tool to automate translations for UI elements, reducing the time required for developers to run new words or phrases through Google Translate.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails 5, Ember.js, Git, MySQL, GitHub, Back-end, Full-stack, HTML5, CSS3, RSpec, Sidekiq, Elasticsearch, Redis, Bootstrap, API Documentation, Mailchimp, Mandrill, HTML, Estimations, CSS, Code Review, Agile, SaaS

Software Engineer

2011 - 2014
Google
  • Developed peer-to-peer payment features, such as sending money, adding money to a prepaid account, and withdrawing money to a bank account for Google Wallet.
  • Contributed to a UI redesign of the Gmail Web UI.
  • Moved dozens of Gmail UI experiments to launched or deprecated, which involved extensive cleanup and quality assurance.
Technologies: Java, JavaScript, API Documentation, Code Review

Thanx Public API

https://docs.thanx.com/
I was the architect and chief contributor to the Thanx public API. The documentation can be found at the project's URL.

This API supports a third-party website or mobile client that wishes to register users with loyalty programs run by Thanx and sign them up for email marketing.

Languages

Ruby, SQL, HTML5, HTML, Snowflake, Java, JavaScript, CSS3, CSS

Frameworks

Ruby on Rails 5, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ember.js, Bootstrap

Libraries/APIs

REST APIs, Sidekiq, Twilio API, Stripe, Devise, React

Tools

GitHub, RSpec, Looker, Git, Mailchimp, Atom, Amazon Simple Email Service (SES)

Platforms

Mandrill, Heroku, Twilio, New Relic, MacOS, Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Storage

Redis, MySQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch

Other

ActiveAdmin, APIs, Back-end, API Integration, Ruby Gems, API Documentation, Code Review, SaaS, Full-stack, Upgrades, Estimations

Paradigms

Test-driven Development (TDD), Agile

2007 - 2010

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA, USA