Ruby Rails Developer Contract Jobs in Austin, TX

Rugiet is a high-growth, innovative telemedicine company pioneering patented solutions in the men's health space. We are dedicated to delivering accessible, effective, and patient-centric healthcare. As we continue to expand our suite of products and market presence, we rely on data-driven strategy and compelling messaging to connect patients with our life-changing solutions.

Rugiet is looking for a Staff Software Engineer who combines deep technical expertise with strong product instincts and a bias for ownership. You’ll be a senior individual contributor driving architecture, reliability, and developer experience across our stack.

You will partner with engineering, product, design, and operations to set technical direction, lead complex projects end-to-end, and raise the bar for code quality, observability, and automation. You’ll also play a key role in evolving how we use AI and lightweight automation to reduce toil and ship high-quality features faster.

• Establish and socialize a clear technical direction for our core Rails + React systems (architecture, data, and reliability).
• Reduce mean time to resolution (MTTR) and incident recurrence through improved observability and root‑cause fixes.
• Lead 2–3 high‑impact, cross‑functional projects from design through launch and iteration.
• Materially improve developer experience (DX) via tooling, CI/CD, and AI‑assisted workflows—measurably reducing cycle time and manual toil.
• Mentor engineers across the team; help level up design reviews, code quality, and system thinking.

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Own architecture and technical design for complex initiatives across the Rails + React stack, balancing pragmatism with long‑term maintainability.
• Break down ambiguous product and platform problems into clear technical plans, milestones, and trade‑offs.
• Evolve our system boundaries (services, modules, contracts) as the product and team scale.
• Define standards for code quality, testing, observability, and performance—and ensure they are applied consistently across teams.
• Make thoughtful build‑vs‑buy decisions and introduce new technologies where they create real leverage.

• Partner closely with Product, Design, Operations, and Clinical teams to turn business goals into resilient, scalable solutions.
• Lead end‑to‑end delivery for critical projects: discovery, design reviews, implementation, rollout, and post‑launch iteration.
• Balance short‑term feature delivery with longer‑term platform investments (e.g., refactors, migrations, performance and reliability work).
• Communicate clearly with technical and non‑technical stakeholders, including risks, trade‑offs, and timelines.

• Mentor senior and mid‑level engineers through design reviews, pairing, and thoughtful feedback.
• Model excellent engineering practices: clear RFCs, high‑quality PRs, testable designs, and crisp incident write‑ups.
• Help shape our engineering culture: pragmatic, kind, direct, and oriented around outcomes rather than tools.
• Contribute to hiring and onboarding by participating in interviews, improving our interview loops, and helping new teammates ramp quickly.

• Backend: Ruby on Rails, Sidekiq/background jobs, PostgreSQL.
• Frontend: React (and, where appropriate, Next.js) with modern component patterns and testing.
• Tooling & Platform: GitHub, CI/CD, cloud infrastructure (AWS, Vercel), monitoring/observability tools.

• 10+ years of professional experience building and operating production web applications, including substantial time at a Senior/Lead level.
• Deep hands‑on experience with Ruby on Rails and React (or very similar frameworks), including APIs, background jobs, data modeling, and performance tuning.
• Strong system design and architecture skills: modularization, data modeling, scaling strategies, and trade‑off analysis.
• Proven track record leading complex, cross‑functional projects—from ambiguous requirements to successful production rollout.
• Experience owning production systems: incident response, root‑cause analysis, and designing durable fixes.
• Comfortable working in fast‑paced, product‑driven environments with iterative delivery and tight feedback loops.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; able to explain technical concepts clearly to non‑engineers and drive alignment.

• Experience in telehealth, healthcare, or other regulated domains, with awareness of secure data handling and privacy requirements.
• Experience with Next.js and modern front-end performance techniques (SSR, ISR, code‑splitting, image optimization).
• Familiarity with modern testing approaches and tools.
• Prior experience in a Staff or Principal Engineer role, or as a Lead Engineer responsible for technical direction and mentoring.
• Hands‑on use of AI‑assisted development tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Open AI, modern LLMs) to improve velocity, quality, and reliability—not just autocomplete.
• Experience improving developer experience (DX): build tooling, CI/CD pipelines, repo structure, and documentation.

• Problem‑first: you clarify the real problem, constraints, and trade‑offs before committing to a solution.
• Systems thinker: you consider downstream effects, failure modes, and long‑term maintainability.
• Pragmatic: you favor simple, observable solutions and iterate rather than over‑design.
• Ownership mindset: you care about outcomes, not just tickets; you follow through after launch and leave systems better than you found them.
• Multiplier: you raise the bar for those around you through mentorship, thoughtful feedback, and good technical defaults.
• Bias to automate: you turn recurring issues and manual workflows into scripts, tools, and platform capabilities.

• If you are excited by the opportunity to make a significant impact on a growing healthcare company by organizing and optimizing our creative output, please submit your resume and a cover letter detailing your relevant experience and why you are a great fit for this role.