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david_padilla rubyist since 2009

Been there,
shipped that.

Independent Ruby on Rails anything (thanks, AI) contractor with nearly 25 years of experience. I help startups ship fast, scale hard, and sleep at night.

Get in touch See my work
david.jpg
David Padilla
puts "hola!"

# about.rb

def story

I've been shipping production software with Ruby on Rails since 2009 and it's still my weapon of choice, but it's no longer my only one. AI has changed the game. With agentic tools like Claude Code, I now build across languages and frameworks that would have taken me months to ramp up on. The stack matters less than the engineer. What I bring is nearly 25 years of knowing how to architect products, design systems that scale, and ship software that works.

I work directly with founding teams to turn business problems into production-ready solutions. Database design, performance optimization, test infrastructure, system architecture. I've done it all, and I care more about getting the product right than which language it's written in.

I've worn many hats over the years, but I keep coming back to the code. Scroll down for the full timeline.

end

# experience.rb

git log --career

Independent Contractor

2020 – present

Scaling platforms for US-based startups. Performance optimization, PostgreSQL tuning, AI-powered development workflows. Building robust, performant applications that grow with their users.

aoorora

CEO // 2020 – 2024

SAAS engine for lending and financial services in Mexico and Latin America.

Crowd Interactive

CEO // 2010 – 2016

Turned a small Rails dev shop in Mexico into one of the most recognized software consultancies in the country, servicing startups on both US coasts. Founded MagmaConf.

EasyBroker

CTO // 2015 – 2016

Ruby on Rails platform for the real estate industry.

ModCloth

Senior Engineer // 2008 – 2010

Designed, developed and launched the e-commerce platform using Ruby on Rails. High-traffic, high-availability.

Softtek

Software Engineer // 2006 – 2008

Financial web applications for GE Treasury. High-availability systems.

# gems.rb

require "my_gems"

$ gem list --local

acts_as_shopping_cart

An abstract shopping cart implementation for Rails applications.

bootstrap_form

Rails form helpers to speed up Bootstrap CSS implementation.

rails-jquery-autocomplete

A jQuery autocomplete gem for Rails. Started it, then passed the torch.

commend.us

A website that writes LinkedIn recommendations. It's still up.

# talks.rb

Conference.all

I like to speak at conferences all over the world. Some recorded, some not. All fun.

# Got an interesting project?

send(:email)

I love working on challenging projects. Drop me a line.

[email protected]