
Boris Staal
Verified Expert in Engineering
Software Developer
Mexico City, Mexico
Toptal member since July 2, 2013
With over 20 years of software engineering and architecture experience, Boris is a proven leader and innovator in various domains and industries. He specializes in Rust, Python, TypeScript, and Ruby, including IoT and cloud design. As the chief architect at Vanilla, a fast-growing fintech unicorn, Boris leads the development and guidance of a multi-language microservice mesh based on Kubernetes—ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.
Portfolio
Experience
- Ruby - 10 years
- Concurrent Programming - 8 years
- PostgreSQL - 8 years
- DevOps - 6 years
- TypeScript - 6 years
- Python - 5 years
- C# - 5 years
- Rust - 3 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Git, Terminal, Vim Text Editor, Sublime Text, MacOS, Agile Software Development
The most amazing...
...project I've designed is a distributed IoT network of sonars that analyzes fish behavior in salmon farms and automates feeding based on their needs.
Work Experience
Chief Software Architect
Vanilla
- Crafted and developed the overall solution architecture as a network of microservices orchestrated by Kubernetes with Rails-facing customers.
- Migrated the project from GCP to AWS using Terraform with the support of development and staging environments.
- Devised and co-authored microservices mesh, including high-load services written in Rust.
- Built AMQP-based data processing pipeline involving ChatGPT and facing customers with WebSocket handled directly by MQTT broker.
Lead Software Engineer
CageEye
- Designed and engineered an IoT platform for the reliable gathering of sensor data coming from remote fish farms.
- Created a low-profile Python-based firmware for sonar solution using complex math in a real-time environment.
- Designed and deployed a multi-language microservice mesh based on the Google Kubernetes Engine.
- Introduced data processing pipeline utilizing Apache Airflow and storing terabytes of data in Cassandra.
Lead Back-end Developer
Qai Invest (via Toptal)
- Picked up and refined the existing problematic parts of the app, thus improving the app's stability by 80%.
- Gathered and moved all chaotically-spawned services (PSQL, Redis, Influx) to Terraform, ensuring straightforwardness and ability to detect and mitigate configuration drifts.
- Moved all the used services and the app from numerous providers to Google Cloud with no downtime.
Senior Software Engineer
Vanilla
- Co-authored and guided overall solution architecture, working as a microservices mesh orchestrated by Kubernetes.
- Deployed the project to Google Cloud Platform using Terraform with the support of development and staging environments.
- Implemented VPN-based private networking access and encryption strategy to correspond to financial services processing personal data requirements.
Senior Software Engineer
Evil Martians
- Authored tools that helped the development of a typed superset of Ruby that eventually yielded the Ruby Parser gem.
- Built Rove and advocated Vagrant and container-based development environments at group meetings and conferences.
- Launched three projects developed from scratch as a lead engineer.
Senior Software Developer
VMware (via Toptal)
- Redesigned the automatic provisioning system starting from the data level.
- Migrated the existing online solution to a newer version without downtime.
- Automated tasks that were handled manually before.
Senior Software Engineer
FlexCode
- Built a multi-driver bot platform automating the scraping of ticket prices directly from aero-company websites, including proxy rotation management.
- Designed resilient, scalable worker orchestration as a part of a mono-service built with Rails and Sidekiq.
- Participated in the integration of numerous external APIs.
Senior RoR Developer
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.
Senior RoR Developer
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.
Head of Technology
Roundlake
- Built one of the first neo-banking platforms in CIS using a combination of Rails 2 and Java.
- Created an efficient semi-remote team of engineers managed through Scrum.
- Motivated the internal community to contribute to known open-source projects.
CTO
MobiMoney
- Designed an architecture that successfully handled over 1,000 requests per second at peak load.
- Integrated Rails efficiently with the .NET back end.
- Developed on top of JRuby as one of the first production-ready platforms to utilize all of the just-in-time (JIT) benefits.
Software Engineer | Architect
Immo
- Created CoZen, an automated deployment, continuous integration, and permissions management system based on Subversion (SVN) and Python.
- Designed imEye, a system for analyzing indicators from thousands of sources.
- Developed a Russian stemming variant of PHP as a C extension.
- Contributed to the company's move from Waterfall to Kanban.
- Improved the scalability of a high-load dating service through sharding, manual RAM-based C++ indexer development, and CDN networking.
Web Developer
Labrador ISP
- Built a web interface for customer billing using the most recent UI frameworks.
- Assisted with the deployment of said billing interface.
- Participated in setting up complicated routing between layers of customer networks.
Experience
Round Bank
Smart Kiosk
https://github.com/smartkiosk/Rove: Online Vagrant Configurator
https://github.com/aderyabin/rove/WashOut
https://github.com/inossidabile/wash_out/Codo Tool
https://github.com/netzpirat/codo/Policier (WIP)
https://github.com/inossidabile/policierEducation
Master's Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science
MGAPI - Remote
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
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
Platforms
Google Cloud SDK, Kubernetes, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Docker, MacOS, Linux, Amazon Web Services (AWS), BigBlueButton, AWS IoT
Storage
PostgreSQL, Redis, Google Cloud, Cassandra, MySQL, Elasticsearch, Azure Active Directory, MongoDB, InfluxDB
Other
APIs, Full-stack, API Integration, Web Scraping, Fintech, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), RPC, AirWatch, Networking, Device Drivers, SOAP, Programming Languages, Internet of Things (IoT)
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