Mike Hall

Owned backend system stability and performance for a high-traffic Rails platform supporting millions of users, leading modernization and data-layer optimization to improve reliability and delivery under production load.

• Critical performance bottlenecks under peak traffic were resolved by replacing expensive reporting queries with Materialized Views and migrating cache and session workloads to Redis, improving response times and isolating transactional databases from non-critical load.
• Accumulating technical debt across a legacy Rails ecosystem was reduced by leading hands-on upgrades of core Ruby and Rails stacks across multiple applications, maintaining service continuity during high-risk platform transitions.
• Slow and unreliable delivery cycles were improved by re-architecting CI/CD pipelines for parallel execution, reducing feedback time and enabling more consistent and predictable releases.
• Limited operational visibility across distributed services was addressed by introducing centralized logging and Prometheus-based monitoring, enabling earlier detection of performance issues and reducing production firefighting.
• High-volume data synchronization challenges were solved by designing and implementing data pipelines to move and reconcile millions of records across systems, supporting reliable integrations and new business capabilities.

Skills: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Sidekiq, Prometheus, CI/CD, Data Pipelines, System Observability, Backend Architecture