Available from July 2026

Senior Rails
engineer who
ships.

24 years of building web applications with Ruby on Rails. I write code, lead teams when needed, and prefer to stay close to the product. Based in the Netherlands, working remotely since 2008.

Get in touch Experience →

01About

A bit about me.

I'm Peter, 46, father of two. I live in Oosterwolde, a small village in Friesland in the north of the Netherlands. Outside of work I travel, cook, read, hit the gym, and go flyfishing.

I've spent most of my career as an independent contractor, building e-commerce and SaaS applications for clients using Ruby on Rails, Spree, and Solidus. Most recently I was Lead Product Engineer at SportsKey, setting technical direction across their Rails monolith while staying hands-on in the codebase.

I'm a boring Rails advocate. Convention over configuration, server-rendered HTML, Hotwire, strong testing habits. I've been active in open source since the Spree days in 2008 and still maintain projects, most recently mollie_pay, a Mollie-native payments engine for Rails.

02Expertise

Where I'm deep.

Ruby on Rails

Idiomatic Rails since the early days. Hotwire, Stimulus, Turbo, server-rendered HTML, testing, convention over configuration.

ii.

System Architecture

The majestic monolith. Rails conventions, Solid Queue for background jobs, database optimization, API design, deployment with Kamal.

iii.

Open Source E-Commerce

Early Spree adopter (2008), core team member, extension author. Solidus Stakeholder Team. Payment integration, fulfillment workflows.

iv.

Team Leadership

Hiring, mentoring, setting technical direction. I lead and mentor the teams I work with, unblocking colleagues and keeping stakeholders in the loop.

Technical Strategy

Roadmaps, modernization, technical decisions aligned with business goals. I speak both the language of engineers and the language of business.

vi.

Performance & Optimization

Bottleneck identification, slow query optimization, API response times, production monitoring.

Boring Rails stack Ruby on Rails·SQLite·Solid Queue·Solid Cache·Solid Cable·Hotwire·Kamal

03Experience

Twenty-four years, mostly shipped.

2025, 2026

Lead Product Engineer

SportsKey · Dublin (Remote)

Set technical direction across the Rails monolith. Balanced IC work with leadership of a small product team on a B2B SaaS platform serving sports facilities and clubs.

2021, 2024

Chief Happiness Officer & Principal Software Engineer

VitaminLab · Remote

Led the engineering team and owned the technical architecture of a personalized nutrition platform. Delivered solutions in clean, idiomatic Rails while keeping development teams and stakeholders aligned.

2017, 2018

CXOps & e-Commerce Consultant

Glossier, Inc. · New York City (Contract)

Set up the CXOps squad. Created workflows and processes from the ground up to empower the gTeam in delivering the best customer experience Glossier had ever seen.

2015, 2016

Senior Software Engineer

Dynamo · Montreal, Canada

Ported the Spree-based Glossier webshop to Solidus. Improved performance and developer happiness while Glossier was growing toward unicorn status.

2010, 2019

Selected Senior Rails Engagements

Engine eCommerce · Nerds & Company · Stembolt · Various

Senior product engineering, e-commerce team lead, Solidus framework support, CTO of a stock-photo platform, technical account management. Scoped contracts delivered through Peter Berkenbosch Consultancy B.V.

2003, 2009

Earlier Career: Java & J2EE

VINCIS · Get There · QNH Consulting · theFactor.e

Software engineer and tech lead roles in enterprise application development. Java, J2EE, CMS scripting. Certified SCJP and SCWCD.

2001 →

Founder

Peter Berkenbosch Consultancy B.V. · Oosterwolde, NL

The thread through all of the above. Independent contracting practice since 2001, providing hands-on Ruby and Rails engineering for e-commerce and SaaS clients.

04Open source & community

Long-time contributor, still showing up.

Active in open-source e-commerce since the Spree days in 2008. Core contributor, extension author, Solidus Stakeholder Team member. I've moved on to other work but remain close to the community and the projects I helped build.

Current project: mollie_pay, a Mollie-native payments engine for Rails. EU-focused alternative to Stripe integrations. v0.1.0 shipped.

github.com/peterberkenbosch

05Contact

Available from July 2026. Let's talk.

[email protected] email peterberkenbosch linkedin peterberkenbosch github +31 6 5708 6546 phone

Senior Railsengineer whoships.