Resume template · Updated October 2026
Ruby on Rails developer resume template
Short answer
Leslie works for a senior Rails developer with long tenure on one codebase: two sentences of summary, then work experience, then skills, under a centred blue header. The fictional sample spent seven years on one marketplace monolith, upgrading it from Rails 5.2 to 8, speeding up its test suite and dashboards, and carving out a payouts engine. Open-source gem fixes sit in an extra list.
Download the ruby developer sample
Elliot is a fictional senior ruby on rails developer. Replace every detail with your own before you send it.
The files are made in your browser by Resumity's own exporters, from this sample. The builder opens it as your own resume: click any line to replace it. Free plan, no watermark.
Why Leslie suits a ruby developer resume
Leslie keeps a summary, which a long stint at one employer needs to explain its arc, and then prints work experience ahead of skills. Rails hiring is mostly about the codebase you have looked after, so letting the upgrade and performance bullets lead suits it, with one touch of blue in the header.
Second choice: Catalyst. Catalyst opens on the current job with no summary; use it if your headline and first bullets explain your work without extra context.
What goes in each section, in Leslie's order
Leslie prints its sections in a fixed order, the same in the PDF and the Word file. Here is that order for this sample, and what to put in each section.
- Professional Summary. Give the Rails versions you have carried an app through and the size of the codebase. Seven years on one Rails monolith is a strength in Ruby hiring, so say it outright.
- Work Experience. Rails bullets should show stewardship: upgrades and how you made them safe, query performance and the tools you used (Bullet, rack-mini-profiler), background jobs, test suite speed, boundaries inside the monolith. CI time and page time are easy to measure and convincing.
- Skills. Technical: Ruby, Rails, Hotwire, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq, RSpec. Tools: Redis, your hosting, CI and monitoring. Leslie prints these after the jobs, so they confirm the bullets rather than introduce you.
- Education. Degree and year. Plenty of Rails developers studied something else entirely; list yours plainly.
- Open source. Leslie prints the extra list last. "Open source" suits Ruby well: the gem, what you fixed or added and whether it was merged.
The sample resume as text
The same content as the files above, so you can copy a line or compare it with your own.
Elliot Brennan
Senior Ruby on Rails Developer
Portland, OR | elliot.brennan@example.com | (503) 555-0171 | github.com/sample-elliot-brennan | linkedin.com/in/sample-elliot-brennan
Rails developer with nine years, seven of them on one large marketplace monolith. Took it from Rails 5.2 to Rails 8 in four steps, kept seller dashboards fast as traffic grew, and drew the boundaries that let a payouts team own its code.
Experience
Senior Rails Developer, Thimbleberry Market, Portland, OR (04/2019 to Present)
- Led the upgrade from Rails 5.2 to Rails 8 in four releases using a dual-boot Gemfile, with no rollbacks.
- Cut the RSpec suite on CI from 38 to 11 minutes by parallelising it and slimming the slowest factories.
- Fixed N+1 queries on seller dashboards found with Bullet and added counter caches; median page time fell from 1.1 s to 380 ms.
- Extracted payouts into a Rails engine with a clear public interface, so a team of three could own it.
- Moved email and image processing to Sidekiq with retries and alerts on dead jobs.
Rails Developer, Hollis and Pike Software, Portland, OR (07/2017 to 03/2019)
- Built Rails apps for four clients, including a volunteer scheduling app with server-rendered views.
- Wrote a JSON API in Rails for a client's React Native app.
- Ran weekly code reviews with two junior developers.
Open source
- Fixed a time zone bug in a widely used scheduling gem (merged).
- Added upgrade notes to the README of a Rails admin gem.
Education
BA, Linguistics, Willamette Valley College (05/2017)
Skills
Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Hotwire (Turbo, Stimulus), PostgreSQL, Sidekiq, RSpec, Redis, Bullet, rack-mini-profiler, GitHub Actions, Datadog, Heroku, Mentoring, Writing upgrade guides
How to make the sample yours
Write the upgrade path you actually took
If you went from Rails 6.1 to 7.1, say so, and name the method: dual boot, fixing deprecations release by release, a soak on staging. Upgrade experience is one of the most requested Rails skills.
Measure the test suite
CI time before and after, flaky tests removed, factories trimmed. Teams with large Rails apps feel a slow suite every day.
Replace the marketplace domain
Change sellers and payouts to your app's users and money flows. Name the hardest part of the domain you own.
Mention Hotwire or an API only if you used it
Some Rails roles are API-only behind a React or mobile client; others are server-rendered with Turbo and Stimulus. Keep whichever matches your work.
Keep the consultancy years short
An earlier agency role can drop to two bullets: the range of clients and one technical highlight.
Keywords to keep where they are true
Terms this kind of resume is usually searched for. Use the posting's exact wording, and only for work you have done.
- Ruby
- Ruby on Rails
- Rails upgrades
- Hotwire
- Turbo and Stimulus
- ActiveRecord
- PostgreSQL
- Sidekiq
- Redis
- RSpec
- N+1 queries
- Rails engines
- background jobs
- monolith
Mistakes to avoid
- "Ruby, Rails, RoR, Ruby on Rails" as four separate skills.
- Bullets about gems you added with no reason given. Say what problem each one solved.
- Underselling long tenure. Seven years on one app reads as depth when the bullets show the app changing.
- Leaving out testing; Rails teams expect RSpec or Minitest by default.
How the sample PDF reads in text extractors
We exported this sample with Resumity's PDF exporter in Chrome on 2026-10-29 and read the file back with three open-source text extractors. This shows whether software that turns a PDF into text can recover it; it is not a test of any commercial applicant tracking system. How we test templates.
| Extractor | Name, email, phone | Headings | Bullets intact |
|---|---|---|---|
| pdf.js 4.10.38 | All found | 5 of 5 | 8 of 8 |
| pdftotext (Xpdf) 4.00 | All found | 5 of 5 | 8 of 8 |
| pypdf 6.13.0 | All found | 5 of 5 | 8 of 8 |
Frequently asked questions
Is long tenure at one Rails company a problem?
Not if the bullets show the app changing under you: upgrades, performance work, new boundaries, people you trained. If your title changed, split the role into two job lines.
Should a Ruby developer resume mention JavaScript?
Yes, at the level you use it. Stimulus controllers, a React front end or plain ERB with Turbo each tell a hiring team something about the apps you can work on.
How do I show open-source Ruby work?
In the extra list or Projects: the gem, what you changed, whether it was merged, and a link. Small fixes count.
Do I need to list Ruby versions as well as Rails versions?
The Rails versions matter more. Add the Ruby version only if you led an upgrade of it, such as moving an app to Ruby 3.
Will applicant tracking systems read this Leslie PDF?
The sample PDF read back with its contact details, all 5 section headings and all 8 bullets intact in three open-source text extractors (pdf.js, pdftotext and pypdf). Commercial systems such as Workday, Greenhouse or Taleo were not tested, and each employer configures its own.
Guides and templates for this resume
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