Case Studies
A sampling of consulting engagements over the past decade or so. Most start the same way: a system that's gotten slow, or a scaling decision that's hard to reverse, and a need for an honest read on what's actually wrong. Client names are withheld; the technical detail is real.
A Rails advisory relationship that came back years later
Architecture and performance counsel for a clinical-genetics SaaS — and a repeat engagement after a multi-year gap.
Coaching an agency's developers through a database crunch
A crisis call, then a half-day onsite teaching a Rails shop's own team how to keep MySQL fast.
Five seconds to 1.2, the same day
Profiling and fixing a slow pedigree page in a livestock-management Rails app — and teaching the client the technique.
iPhone Mobile communications Review
A focused architecture review for an iPhone chat backend — four scaling options, a recommendation, and a benchmarking plan the client ran himself.
Database reviews for a public diagnostics company's SaaS
Two performance-and-architecture engagements for a publicly-traded veterinary diagnostics firm — one referral led to the next.
Fixing Rails performance on a live charity SaaS
Memory errors, a thrashing cache, and N+1 queries on a Heroku app failing at seven concurrent users — diagnosed and fixed in the client's own codebase.
A small client who kept coming back
A performance report, then backups, MySQL tuning, and bug diagnosis for a property-management SaaS — and a relationship that stayed warm for years.
De-risking a scaling event before the school year
A fixed-scope Rails performance audit for an EdTech startup bracing for 15,000 students at once — delivered inside the estimate.
Hunting a three-year intermittent lock problem
Live diagnostic sessions and a written report on database lock contention in a high-traffic rental-management SaaS — including the honest part, where the intermittent bug stayed hard to catch.
A scaling review for a sensitive-data Rails app
A performance and architecture report for an identity- and income-verification product — read-only access, a regulated domain, and a quietly successful engagement.