Matthew is available for hire

Matthew Dick

Verified Expert in Engineering

Software Engineer and Developer

Location

San Francisco, CA, United States

Toptal Member Since

February 28, 2022

Matthew is a die-hard Ruby on Rails full-stack developer who loves new and existing projects alike. Clean and readable code is his mission, and code coverage is his baseline. Matthew is passionate about programming, and he is eager to combine forces to build something beautiful!

Back-end Integration GitHub Ruby Ruby on Rails (RoR)RSpec JSON Jira Visual Studio Code (VS Code)Full-stack Front-end Webhooks Capybara HTML5 CSS

Portfolio

Cisco Meraki

Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), React, Redux, RSpec, PostgreSQL, REST...

Cobuy

Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), RSpec, Bootstrap, Stimulus, Heroku, Fastly, Bugsnag...

Plated

Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), SCSS, HTML, React, PostgreSQL, Heroku, CircleCI...

Experience

RSpec - 8 years Ruby - 8 years Ruby on Rails (RoR) - 8 years PostgreSQL - 6 years Amplitude - 6 years React - 6 years Heroku - 6 years Segment.io - 6 years

Availability

Part-time

Preferred Environment

Visual Studio Code (VS Code), iTerm2, GitHub, Jira, Slack, Heroku, Ruby on Rails (RoR)

The most amazing...

...experience I've had is with an existing organization. I was part of the engineering team that brought a mid-sized Series C company to a successful acquisition.

Work Experience

Senior Software Engineer

2020 - PRESENT

Cisco Meraki

Educated colleagues on Rails' best practices and mentored interns toward proficiency with new languages and frameworks, namely Ruby, Rails, React, and Redux.
Designed low-level business-specific tooling to safely navigate from under technical debt and away from antipatterns entrenched in over a decade of code contributions.
Collaborated with newer product partners to establish processes and scope new features.

Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), React, Redux, RSpec, PostgreSQL, REST, Authentication, Authorization, HTML5, CSS, SQL, JavaScript, APIs, MySQL, Full-stack, Back-end, Front-end, API Integration, JSON, Architecture, Leadership, Datasets

Head of Engineerinrg

2019 - 2020

Cobuy

Defined guiding principles for the engineering organization, emphasizing a product-first approach.
Re-architected the outdated Ruby on Rails web application focused on simplifying data models, introducing full test coverage, and maximizing flexibility.
Spearheaded recruitment of software engineers and product leadership.
Introduced application monitoring, analytics tracking, and continuous deployment to the web app.
Integrated CoBuy's core business services with the Salesforce CRM platform.

Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), RSpec, Bootstrap, Stimulus, Heroku, Fastly, Bugsnag, CircleCI, Google Analytics, Stripe API, Amplitude, Segment.io, Salesforce Sales Cloud, HTML5, CSS, SQL, JavaScript, APIs, MySQL, Full-stack, Back-end, Front-end, API Integration, Webhooks, JSON, Facebook Ads, Facebook Pixel, Google Ads, Integration, Architecture, Leadership, Datasets

Engineering Lead

2016 - 2019

Plated

Contributed as a full-stack engineer and member of three Agile product teams over 15 months, each comprising 2-4 engineers and operating within 1-2 week sprint cycles.
Identified opportunities to refactor and improve in-house frameworks widely recognized as illegible or defunct and worked with engineering leads to prioritize the highest value of these initiatives.
Led the sole consumer-facing full-stack engineering team of five engineers.
Expanded engineering recruitment efforts to hire over 10 new engineers, requiring coordination with internal recruitment alongside engineering peers and leadership.
Collaborated with engineering leaders weekly to ensure technical cohesion of architectural decisions between consumer-facing products and back-of-house requirements.
Worked closely with product managers and designers to identify potential products, estimate technical effort, and schedule a backlog of engineering work to validate and build new features.

Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), SCSS, HTML, React, PostgreSQL, Heroku, CircleCI, Jira, HTML5, CSS, SQL, JavaScript, APIs, MySQL, Full-stack, Back-end, Front-end, API Integration, Webhooks, JSON, Integration, Architecture, Leadership, Datasets

Software Engineer

2014 - 2016

Imfuna

Developed new features in an agile environment using Ruby on Rails, HTML, Haml, CSS, Sass, JavaScript, and jQuery.
Utilized behavior-driven development techniques to confidently integrate new features with the existing application before each incremental release.
Addressed customer support requests for information and back-end maintenance via the Rails console using the ZenDesk platform.
Completed multi-week sprints organized in the Jira Agile tracker by Atlassian.
Assembled custom UIImagePickerController prototype in Xcode using Objective-C for asynchronous photography within the Imfuna mobile inspection application.

Technologies: Ruby, Ruby on Rails (RoR), RSpec, Capybara, Knockout (Knockout.js), jQuery, Bootstrap, Xcode, Zendesk, HTML5, CSS, SQL, JavaScript, APIs, MySQL, Full-stack, Back-end, Front-end, JSON

Experience

Abalone Analytics

https://github.com/rubyforgood/abalone

Not mine, but an open-source project I like to volunteer with.

The Abalone project is a data tracking and analytics system that stores and measures data for population trends, mortality rates, and breeding programs.

Ruby Gem: Service Objects for Rails

https://github.com/mattwd7/service_objects_rails

The service_objects_rails gem is a lightweight, high-speed service layer for Rails applications. Gone are the days of fat controllers and fat models! Service objects (sometimes known as Commands) enable an important service layer in your Rails applications to keep your code readable, reusable, and testable. Service objects help to facilitate the separation of concerns and the single responsibility principle.

Casa (Court Appointed Special Advocate)

https://github.com/mattwd7/casa/tree/main

CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) is a role fulfilled by a trained volunteer sworn into a county-level juvenile dependency court system to advocate for youth in the corresponding county's foster care system. CASA is also the namesake role of the national organization CASA, which exists to cultivate and supervise volunteers carrying out this work – with county-level chapters (operating relatively independently of each other) across the country.

Skills

Languages

Ruby, SCSS, HTML, HTML5, CSS, SQL, JavaScript

Frameworks

Ruby on Rails (RoR), Redux, Capybara, Bootstrap, Stimulus, Knockout (Knockout.js)

Tools

GitHub, Jira, Slack, RSpec, Facebook Pixel, Podio, CircleCI, Xcode, Fastly, Bugsnag, Google Analytics, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Webpack

Platforms

Visual Studio Code (VS Code), Heroku, Zendesk

Storage

JSON, PostgreSQL, MySQL

Other

APIs, Back-end, Integration, Architecture, Leadership, iTerm2, Authentication, Authorization, Amplitude, Full-stack, Front-end, API Integration, Webhooks, Datasets, N8n, Citrix Podio, Critical Thinking, Physics, Applied Mathematics, Ruby Gems, Facebook Ads, Google Ads

Libraries/APIs

React, jQuery, Stripe API, Segment.io

Paradigms

REST

Education

2007 - 2012

Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering

University of California in Los Angeles - Los Angeles, CA, USA