Senior Ruby on Rails Developer

Canva Designer; Abu Dhabi; Remote; AED 320,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

Canva is seeking an experienced Senior Ruby on Rails Developer to design, develop, test, optimize, and maintain scalable web applications and backend services using Ruby and Rails. The role emphasizes API development, database optimization, security, cloud deployment, testing, and system architecture while mentoring peers.

The ideal candidate brings strong Ruby/Rails expertise and modern software-engineering practices, with a track record of delivering production-grade applications in a

Qualifications

• Strong professional experience developing production applications using Ruby on Rails.
• Deep understanding of Ruby syntax, object-oriented programming, modules, classes, blocks, iterators, exceptions, and metaprogramming concepts.
• Strong knowledge of Rails architecture, Active Record, routing, controllers, services, jobs, and middleware.
• Experience developing secure, versioned, documented, and maintainable APIs.
• Strong knowledge of PostgreSQL, MySQL, or comparable relational databases.
• Experience with Redis, background jobs, queues, caching, and asynchronous processing.
• Strong automated-testing experience with RSpec, Minitest, Capybara, or comparable tools.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain production-grade Ruby on Rails applications.
• Build scalable, secure, reliable web applications and backend services.
• Translate product requirements into robust technical solutions.
• Participate in architecture, system design, and engineering decisions.
• Develop Rails applications with clean, idiomatic Ruby code.
• Design models, controllers, services, and APIs with proper validation and security.

Skills

Ruby

Ruby on Rails

Web app development

Backend engineering

REST APIs

Relational databases

Cloud platforms

Software engineering

Job description

We're Hiring: Senior Ruby on Rails Developer

Location: United Arab Emirates (Remote)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Experience Level: Senior

Work Arrangement: Fully Remote

About Us

We are a globally focused organization committed to building scalable, secure, reliable, and customer-centered digital products and platforms across diverse markets.

Our engineering teams collaborate across Product, Software Engineering, Design, Data, Cloud, DevOps, Security, Infrastructure, and Operations to deliver high-quality web applications, APIs, and digital services that support critical business processes and evolving customer needs.

The Role

We are seeking an experienced Senior Ruby on Rails Developer to design, develop, test, optimize, and maintain scalable web applications and backend services using Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

The ideal candidate will combine strong Ruby and Rails expertise with modern software-engineering practices, API development, database optimization, application security, cloud deployment, testing, and system architecture. The role will contribute to product development, platform modernization, technical improvements, and engineering standards while providing technical guidance to other developers.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, test, deploy, and maintain production-grade Ruby on Rails applications.
• Build scalable, secure, reliable, and maintainable web applications and backend services.
• Translate product requirements and business needs into robust technical solutions.
• Participate in application architecture, system design, technical planning, and engineering decisions.
• Develop Rails applications using clean, maintainable, and idiomatic Ruby code.
• Design and implement application models, controllers, services, jobs, APIs, and supporting components.
• Apply appropriate object-oriented and modular design principles.
• Develop reusable application components and shared libraries.
• Design and develop RESTful APIs and backend services.
• Develop API endpoints with appropriate validation, authentication, authorization, and error handling.
• Maintain clear API contracts, documentation, versioning, and compatibility standards.
• Integrate Rails applications with internal platforms, third-party services, payment providers, external APIs, and enterprise systems.
• Develop asynchronous processing and background jobs using appropriate Rails and Ruby technologies.
• Design reliable job-processing workflows for scheduled, event-driven, and long-running tasks.
• Implement appropriate retry, timeout, failure-handling, and idempotency mechanisms.
• Design and optimize relational database structures for Rails applications.
• Work extensively with PostgreSQL, MySQL, or comparable relational databases.
• Develop efficient Active Record queries, associations, scopes, validations, and transactions.
• Optimise database queries, indexes, joins, transactions, and data-access patterns.
• Identify and resolve N+1 queries, inefficient database access, and application-level performance bottlenecks.
• Design appropriate caching strategies to improve application responsiveness and scalability.
• Work with Redis or comparable caching and data-storage technologies where appropriate.
• Develop background processing and event-driven workflows using appropriate queueing technologies.
• Design applications for horizontal scalability and reliable operation under increasing workloads.
• Implement appropriate resilience, error handling, monitoring, and recovery mechanisms.
• Develop authentication and authorization functionality using secure application practices.
• Protect applications against common web vulnerabilities including injection, authentication weaknesses, insecure access controls, and cross-site attacks.
• Apply secure coding practices throughout the development lifecycle.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity teams to identify and remediate application vulnerabilities.
• Manage sensitive data appropriately and follow applicable privacy and data-protection requirements.
• Develop unit, integration, request, system, and end-to-end tests.
• Build and maintain automated testing suites using appropriate Ruby and Rails testing frameworks.
• Maintain strong test coverage for critical application functionality and business logic.
• Implement test-driven or behavior-driven development practices where appropriate.
• Conduct code reviews and provide constructive technical feedback.
• Maintain high standards for code quality, readability, maintainability, and testability.
• Investigate production incidents, application failures, data issues, and performance problems.
• Perform root-cause analysis and implement permanent corrective actions.
• Analyze application logs, metrics, traces, errors, and performance information.
• Implement application observability through structured logging, monitoring, metrics, tracing, and health checks.
• Work with DevOps and platform teams to improve application deployment and operational reliability.
• Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines for Ruby on Rails applications.
• Support containerized Rails applications using Docker and Kubernetes where applicable.
• Deploy and operate Rails applications in cloud environments.
• Work with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or comparable cloud platforms.
• Integrate applications with cloud databases, object storage, queues, monitoring platforms, and other managed services.
• Support infrastructure-as-code and automated deployment practices where relevant.
• Implement appropriate application configuration, secrets management, environment management, and deployment controls.
• Design applications with availability, disaster recovery, backup, and business-continuity requirements in mind.
• Participate in load testing, capacity planning, scalability assessments, and performance optimization.
• Profile Ruby and Rails applications to identify CPU, memory, database, network, and application bottlenecks.
• Optimize Ruby code, Rails request processing, database access, background jobs, and application architecture.
• Monitor application response times, throughput, error rates, resource utilization, and system health.
• Develop and maintain reusable Rails engines, gems, libraries, service objects, and technical components where appropriate.
• Evaluate third-party Ruby gems for functionality, security, compatibility, licensing, and maintainability.
• Manage Ruby and gem dependencies and coordinate upgrades to supported versions.
• Plan and execute Ruby, Rails, framework, and dependency upgrades while minimizing application disruption.
• Review legacy Rails code and identify opportunities for modernization, refactoring, and technical-debt reduction.
• Support application migrations, platform modernization, architecture changes, and major Rails upgrades.
• Assess technical risks associated with legacy dependencies, unsupported components, and architectural limitations.

Key Performance Indicators

• Ruby on Rails development delivery performance
• Production application quality
• Production defect rate
• Code-review compliance
• Automated test coverage
• Critical-function test coverage
• Application availability
• System uptime
• API reliability
• API response time
• Application response time
• Request throughput
• Error rate
• Background-job success rate
• Background-job processing latency
• Database query performance
• Database error rate
• N+1 query reduction
• Cache effectiveness
• CPU utilization
• Memory utilization
• Application scalability
• Production incident frequency
• Mean time to detection
• Mean time to resolution
• Repeat incident rate
• Root-cause resolution effectiveness
• CI/CD pipeline success rate
• Deployment success rate
• Release reliability
• Rollback frequency
• Security vulnerability remediation
• Dependency-update compliance
• Ruby and Rails upgrade completion
• Technical-debt reduction
• Legacy-code modernization
• Performance optimization delivery
• Observability coverage
• Monitoring effectiveness
• Documentation completeness
• Reusable-component adoption
• Development productivity
• Stakeholder satisfaction
• Mentoring effectiveness
• Continuous-improvement delivery

Ideal Candidate

The successful candidate should have strong experience in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, web application development, backend engineering, REST APIs, relational databases, cloud platforms, and modern software engineering, preferably within SaaS, e-commerce, financial services, technology, professional services, or other high-volume digital environments.

The candidate should demonstrate:

• Strong professional experience developing production applications using Ruby on Rails.
• Deep understanding of Ruby syntax, object-oriented programming, modules, classes, blocks, iterators, exceptions, and metaprogramming concepts.
• Strong knowledge of Rails architecture, conventions, Active Record, routing, controllers, views, services, jobs, and middleware.
• Experience developing and maintaining large-scale Rails applications.
• Strong understanding of RESTful API design and backend service architecture.
• Experience developing secure, versioned, documented, and maintainable APIs.
• Strong knowledge of PostgreSQL, MySQL, or comparable relational databases.
• Experience optimizing SQL queries, indexes, transactions, associations, and database performance.
• Strong understanding of Active Record performance and query optimization.
• Experience with Redis, background jobs, queues, caching, and asynchronous processing.
• Experience with Sidekiq or comparable background-processing technologies is highly desirable.
• Strong knowledge of application security and secure web-development practices.
• Experience implementing authentication, authorization, access controls, and data protection.
• Strong automated-testing experience with RSpec, Minitest, Capybara, or comparable tools.
• Experience with test-driven or behavior-driven development practices.
• Strong Git and modern software-development workflow experience.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment practices.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes is highly desirable.
• Experience with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or comparable cloud platforms.