overview
Joined Ably as a mid-level engineer on the web platform team. The core mandate was ambitious: systematically dismantle a legacy Ruby on Rails view layer, replacing it with a modern React and Tailwind CSS architecture, all while executing a live corporate rebrand.
The engineering culture was rigorous, operating on a default-to-pairing basis. Every pull request required peer review, and comprehensive test coverage was a non-negotiable baseline for merging.
This role established the engineering context for my subsequent lateral move into the Developer Relations team as a Developer Education Engineer.
what i did
React and Tailwind migration
Refactored legacy ERB/Rails view templates into modular React components styled with Tailwind CSS. This was a concurrent rebrand and rewrite — requiring close coordination with the design team to implement evolving requirements without compromising the architectural integrity of the new component library.
Documentation platform
Contributed significantly to the developer documentation platform, built on Nanoc and Textile. Focused on the build pipeline architecture, introducing optimisations that improved build times and enhanced the developer experience for the content team.
CMS integrations
Maintained the engineering blog (Ghost) and managed structured marketing content through a Gatsby-based CMS backed by Contentful, ensuring content delivery remained fast and decoupled from the main monolithic application.
Engineering culture
Practised daily paired programming, which served as a forcing function for codebase consistency and rapid knowledge transfer. This collaborative approach significantly reduced onboarding friction for new engineers.