I am an Engineering Manager at Bolt in Tallinn, Estonia, as of December 2022.

Before that I was a freelance software developer and spent most of my time working on backend systems in Rust, Ruby (usually with Ruby on Rails) and Go.

Since 2015 I have been working remotely succesfully and prefer remote work over on-site work whenever possible.

My home is in Tallinn, Estonia and usually I'm based there.

You can reach me at dario@gowriteco.de.

Over the years I've worked with many different programming languages, libraries, tools, services and frameworks. I'm always happy to try out something new, yet the following technologies have been a stable in my work:

• Rust, Ruby, Go, JavaScript, Bash, Lisp
• VS Code, emacs, vim, git, tmux
• Ruby on Rails, React + Redux, Vue.js
• Postgresql, MariaDB, Redis, Elasticsearch
• Docker (Swarm), Kubernetes, Terraform, Ansible
• AWS (IAM, EC2, S3), Digital Ocean
• Jenkins, Travis CI

Joined Bolt in Tallinn as an Engineering Manager in the Bolt Markets division

I joined Layer0, now part of Edgio as Lead Engineer:

• improving technical onboarding
• designing and implementing features in systems software in Rust
• establishing and advancing best practices in our team

I took the chance to become an Engineering Manager for another team, and

• improved the relationship between Engineering and Product
• successfully worked towards achieving highly predictable, regular delivery
• helped people grow by coaching, mentoring, and encouraging them to take on new responsibilities

I've joined Toptal as a senior backend engineer.

During this time:

• I helped my team achieve a high level of predictability in their delivery
• Worked with a large distributed system written in Ruby
• Developed internal tools that help support our processes

I've been working in various projects together with Njiuko as part of a larger team:

• A marketplace for storage space in warehouses
• A background system to sync text resources between two systems
• QR-code based login and social features for a conference mobile app
• A background system syncing and mapping sales data between three other systems

Technologies used:

• Ruby, Ruby on Rails
• Resque for background jobs
• plain JavaScript, Vue.js, SASS
• MariaDB, Elasticsearch, Redis
• Docker, Heroku, Linux

I helped D2IQ (formerly Mesosphere) manage their Jenkins configuration as code.

Technologies used:

• Go for writing a custom Terraform provider
• Java/Groovy for interfacing with Jenkins internals
• Jenkins
• Terraform for managing Jenkins configuration

I helped D2IQ (formerly Mesosphere) migrate their Jenkins setup from one cluster to another, including related processes like backups.

Technologies used:

• rsync, ssh, awk, sed and assorted command line utilities
• Groovy for inspecting, verifying and restoring Jenkins state

As part of a cross-functional team we developed a social network-like platform for a client, to help them manage and foster their community, curate and publish content and host video-streamed events.

We built a greenfield system based on Domain-Driven-Design principles using Event Sourcing/CQRS as the main architectural principle.

Towards the end of the project a large part of my time was spent onboarding and mentoring new team members as well as conducting technical interviews.

Technologies and services used:

• Ruby with Sinatra for the backend server
• GraphQL for backend/frontend communication
• DRb for communication between services
• Redis/Postgresql as event stores
• Amazon S3 for caching
• Elasticsearch for providing autocompletion and search over a content library
• Docker Swarm for deployments
• Ansible for configuration management

As part of a close-knit team I helped getting Harrow (now defunct) off the ground.

The project was a greenfield project, heavily relying on persistent queues, provisioning infrastructure dynamically and featured a clear split between the frontend (implemented as Single Page Application) and the backend (exposing only a JSON-over-HTTP API).

Technologies and services used:

• Go for implementing all background services and the HTTP API
• Postgresql as the main data store
• RabbitMQ for persistent queues and IPC
• AWS EC2, LXD and Docker for providing isolated execution environments

As part of the Communities team at XING I developed and shipped features in a large Ruby on Rails application. Development happened in an enterprise context and required constant communication with other teams maintaining their own Rails applications.

Technologies used:

• Ruby on Rails
• SASS, CSS, ERb, plain JavaScript
• RabbitMQ for IPC
• Elasticsearch, MySQL

• Technology is a tool to solve problems and not a goal in itself
• Never skip automated testing. It will come back to haunt you
• Argue with facts, not emotions
• Document the why, and if necessary the how. For your team mates and your future self.

Languages are the thing I'm most excited about in my free time

• German (native)
• English (fluent)
• Estonian (fluent)
• Spanish (A2)
• Russian (A1)
• Hungarian (A1)
• Greek (A1)

I was invited by IT College in Tallinn to teach a Ruby course for beginners for one semester.

The feedback from the students was great and I was nominated best guest lecturer of that year.

Helping others grow and realize their potential provides deep satisfaction.