Boris is available for hire
Hire BorisBoris Staal
Verified Expert in Engineering
Senior Full-stack Developer
Mexico City, Mexico
Toptal member since July 2, 2013
Bio
Boris excels at building scalable, real-time, and distributed software in the cloud and IoT. He loves working as a playing coach, combining the roles of architect and engineer. A polyglot programmer and seasoned open-sourcer, his tools of choice are Rust, Python, .NET, and Kubernetes.
Portfolio
micro1
Python, Large Language Models (LLMs), Model Context Protocol (MCP)
NetDocuments
.NET, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Python 3, PostgreSQL, Couchbase, Apache Kafka, Redis...
Vanilla
Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Rust, Kubernetes, AWS IoT, Elastic, Terraform, Redis...
Experience
- PostgreSQL - 8 years
- Python - 8 years
- Cloud Architecture - 7 years
- .NET - 5 years
- Rust - 4 years
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) - 4 years
Work Experience
Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2026 - PRESENT
micro1
- Researched MCP-driven LLM code generation in the name of open-source software.
- Built and evaluated MCP-driven generation against Pydantic (Python) and TypeORM (TypeScript) codebases.
- Extended the research to GreptimeDB, a Rust time-series database (https://m1.staal.io/greptimedb).
Technologies: Python, Large Language Models (LLMs), Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Staff Software Engineer
2024 - 2026
NetDocuments
- Integrated Datadog telemetry into Kubernetes mesh for Ruby, .NET, and JVM services.
- Co-engineered Azure CI pipelines to enable a multi-tenant QA environment.
- Prototyped an LLM agent with a semantically adjusted JSON schema capable of executing the customer's input.
- Co-designed scaling Couchbase with alternative indexing and further migration to MongoDB without downtime.
Technologies: .NET, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Python 3, PostgreSQL, Couchbase, Apache Kafka, Redis, Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, Datadog, Cloud Architecture
Chief Software Architect
2021 - 2024
Vanilla
- Designed a microservice mesh on EKS that delegates computationally intensive processing to Lambda, absorbing bursts of over 100x baseline load without over-provisioning the cluster (https://staal.io/kubernetes-meets-lambda).
- Migrated project infrastructure from GCP to AWS via ZTNA bridge with zero downtime.
- Built an AMQP-based data processing pipeline around ChatGPT, streaming results to customers over WebSocket served directly by the MQTT broker.
- Engineered compliance features, including client-side database encryption, through Rust-based microservices for lookup and search.
Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Rust, Kubernetes, AWS IoT, Elastic, Terraform, Redis, PostgreSQL, SQL, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Concurrent Programming, APIs, Fintech, Full-stack, API Integration, Python, Web Scraping, Scrum, Google Cloud SDK, Linux, RabbitMQ, TypeScript, DevOps, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Cloud Architecture
Lead Software Engineer
2020 - 2022
CageEye, a Bluegrove Company
- Led the design and engineering of a federated IoT platform for continuous sensor data collection from remote fish farms across Norway, over non-broadband links that could be down for days at a time.
- Developed low-profile Rust and Python firmware for real-time signal processing.
- Implemented a data processing pipeline using Apache Airflow, managing terabytes of data stored in a self-managed Cassandra cluster.
- Designed and provisioned the data warehouse, moving it from BigQuery to Cassandra to Parquet as the data grew, so that it shipped quickly and kept scaling within budget.
Technologies: Rust, Python, .NET, TypeScript, Internet of Things (IoT), AMQP, Cassandra, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Terraform, Kubernetes, ASP.NET MVC, Scrum, Google Cloud SDK, D3.js, Linux, RabbitMQ, DevOps, Go, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Cloud Architecture
Lead Back-end Developer
2020 - 2021
Q.ai
- Consolidated services (PG, Redis, Influx) into Terraform for improved management and configuration tracking.
- Migrated all services and the application from numerous providers to EKS (AWS Kubernetes) without any downtime.
- Integrated Solana Rust contracts into the continuous integration workflow.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), Python 3, PostgreSQL, InfluxDB, Redis, Terraform, Kubernetes, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Zipkin, Networking, SQL, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Concurrent Programming, APIs, Fintech, Full-stack, API Integration, Python, MySQL, Scrum, Linux, RabbitMQ, TypeScript, DevOps, Cloud Architecture
Senior Software Engineer
2019 - 2020
Vanilla
- Designed and implemented cloud architecture for a microservices mesh using Kubernetes.
- Provisioned environments with Terraform in Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
- Developed a Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA)-based private networking solution to meet compliance requirements.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), Node.js, React, Terraform, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, DevOps, PostgreSQL, Elastic, Redis, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), APIs, Full-stack, API Integration, Python, Web Scraping, Scrum, Google Cloud SDK, Linux, RabbitMQ, TypeScript, Cloud Architecture
Senior Software Engineer
2017 - 2019
Evil Martians
- Coauthored an experiment to create a statically typed superset of Ruby compilable into LLVM bytecode.
- Developed a D3-based utility for visualizing real-time large graph mutations in a human-readable way.
- Built Rove (https://github.com/aderyabin/rove) and a few other container-related utilities for containerized development.
Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), JavaScript, C, React, D3.js
Senior Software Engineer
2015 - 2017
VMware
- Upgraded the entire software stack to new major versions.
- Introduced Ansible for automating hypervisor provisioning, ensuring drift detection across large clusters.
- Initiated the migration from Sprockets to Babel-based independent front-end transpilation for the Angular front end.
Technologies: AirWatch, Azure Active Directory, Node.js, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails (RoR), SQL, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), APIs, Full-stack, Scrum, Linux
Senior Software Engineer
2014 - 2015
Flexcode Software
- Developed a Ruby-based SDK to streamline scraping of event-like enterprise websites.
- Designed a resilient and scalable worker orchestration system for asynchronous processing using Sidekiq.
- Introduced Chef for efficient, repeatable provisioning of the servers.
Technologies: UML, RPC, PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), APIs, Full-stack, Scrum, Sidekiq, Angular
Senior RoR Developer
2014 - 2014
Learn To Be Foundation (via Toptal)
- Migrated the platform to a newer Ruby-on-Rails version.
- Assisted in migrating the front end to a newer language stack.
- Participated in API integration using several external edtech services.
Technologies: BigBlueButton, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Object-oriented Programming (OOP), APIs, Full-stack
Chief Software Engineer
2013 - 2014
Mainpeople
- Created Joosy (https://github.com/joosy/joosy), a browser application framework for Rails that moves view rendering to the client and turns the back end into a REST provider.
- Developed Rails libraries enhancing Sprockets pipeline for RICH front end: https://github.com/inossidabile/sprockets-preload.
- Implemented a search engine adaptation for the RICH public front end, improving data accessibility: https://github.com/inossidabile/sunscraper.
Technologies: Ruby on Rails (RoR), CoffeeScript, JavaScript
Senior RoR Developer
2013 - 2014
DRH Internet Inc. (via Toptal)
- Introduced a new workflow based on Scrum, including new tools.
- Migrated one of the software from the product line to Angular after introducing them to the framework.
- Assisted with upgrading a testing environment to newer tools, allowing continuous integration.
- Doubled the performance of the testing environment.
Technologies: Angular, Ruby on Rails (RoR), APIs, API Integration, Web Scraping, MySQL
Head Of Technology
2010 - 2013
Roundlake
- Designed Ruby on Rails front-end endpoints in a way that allowed concurrent use of MRI and JVM interpreters for libraries, JIT, and better parallelism.
- Successfully migrated legacy COBOL bindings to JVM utilizing Micro Focus interop for improved performance.
- Developed a robust client-side banking system leveraging the Actor Model and Akka for real-time processing.
Technologies: JavaScript, Node.js, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, Concurrent Programming, C#, APIs, Fintech, Full-stack, API Integration, Web Scraping
Chief Software Engineer
2007 - 2010
Mobimoney
- Pioneered Rails around release 2.0 as a front end to a .NET application server.
- Created a simplified Ruby implementation of the SOAP provider, which was later released as open-source: https://github.com/inossidabile/wash_out.
- Provisioned concurrent execution of Ruby on Linux and the application server on Windows using a hardware hypervisor.
Technologies: JavaScript, .NET, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Concurrent Programming, C#, APIs, Full-stack
Software Engineer → Architect
2004 - 2007
IMMO
- Created "CoZen", an automated deployment, continuous integration, and permissions management system based on Subversion (SVN), ZSH, and Python.
- Engineered "ImEye", a telemetry engine leveraging MQTT and SQL Server OLAP.
- Scaled the high-throughput public service using C++ sharded middleware, caching the most popular queries in memory in the form of a trigram index.
Technologies: JavaScript, C++, C, Python, Concurrent Programming, Full-stack, MySQL
Software Engineer
2002 - 2004
Labranet ISP
- Built a web interface for real-time customer billing and invoice management.
- Redesigned network federation to scale from a few B2B clients to hundreds of B2C customers.
- Participated in setting up complicated routing between layers of customer networks.
Technologies: JavaScript, Full-stack
Project History
Policier
https://github.com/inossidabile/policierA library researching alternative approaches to ACL management: a DSL for access rules that is easy to read yet structured enough to set conventions from the start, grounded in semantics and linear algebra. PoC is being developed for Ruby on Rails, with plans to adapt it for Python and Prism.
WashOut
https://github.com/inossidabile/wash_out/WashOut is a SOAP server library for Rails that lets an ordinary controller act as a SOAP endpoint, with the WSDL generated from its action declarations. It supports Rails 3 and later on both MRI and JRuby.
Smart Kiosk
https://github.com/smartkiosk/Smart Kiosk is an open-source terminal platform that includes software for servers and terminals to be deployed in the field. The project is based on Ruby and includes some C code for low-level procedures. It has one known deployment cluster containing roughly 4,000 terminals.
Codo (Coffeedoc)
Codo is an automatic documentation generator for CoffeeScript that documents classes, mixins, and methods straight from the source. Joined the core team within the project's first year, then took over maintenance as lead maintainer.
Joosy
https://github.com/joosy/joosyJoosy is an open-source browser application framework based on Rails and CoffeeScript. It moves view rendering to the client and turns the back end into a REST provider. It ran in production at Mainpeople, Roundlake, News360, and several other companies.
Education
2003 - 2009
Master's Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science
Technical University of Sofia - Sofia, Bulgaria
Certifications
AUGUST 2026 - PRESENT
DevOps Platforms & Source Control
Microsoft
JULY 2026 - PRESENT
AI Engineer
micro1
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Joosy, AMQP, D3.js, Node.js, React, POSIX, Sidekiq
Tools
RabbitMQ, Stylus, Terraform, Sublime Text, Vim Text Editor, Terminal, Git, Elastic, Zipkin
Languages
JavaScript, SQL, C#, Python, Ruby, Haml, TypeScript, Elixir, Python 3, Rust, Go, UML, C, C++, Java, Clojure, CoffeeScript
Frameworks
ASP.NET MVC, Ruby on Rails (RoR), .NET, Angular, Django
Paradigms
Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Concurrent Programming, Scrum, DevOps, Agile Software Development, Functional Programming, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Azure DevOps
Platforms
Google Cloud SDK, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Docker, MacOS, Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), BigBlueButton, AWS IoT, Apache Kafka, Azure
Storage
PostgreSQL, Redis, Google Cloud, Cassandra, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Azure Active Directory, MongoDB, InfluxDB, Couchbase, Datadog
Other
APIs, Full-stack, API Integration, Web Scraping, Cloud Architecture, Fintech, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), RPC, AirWatch, Networking, Device Drivers, SOAP, Programming Languages, Internet of Things (IoT), OpenTelemetry, Large Language Models (LLMs), Discrete Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics
Collaboration That Works
How to Work with Toptal
Toptal matches you directly with global industry experts from our network in hours—not weeks or months.
1
Share your needs
Discuss your requirements and refine your scope in a call with a Toptal domain expert.
2
Choose your talent
Get a short list of expertly matched talent within 24 hours to review, interview, and choose from.
3
Start your risk-free talent trial
Work with your chosen talent on a trial basis for up to two weeks. Pay only if you decide to hire them.
Top talent is in high demand.
Start hiring