Raza Hussain
Ruby on Rails Consultant
Ruby on Rails Consultant · 15 Years
I rescue slow, fragile legacy Rails apps — without a rewrite
I find the specific thing your app is falling off, fix that, and leave the codebase safer than I found it. No rewrite, no six-month migration project, no handoff to a junior. 15 years on production Rails, from 5-person startups to 10M-row databases.
100%
Job Success
Upwork Top Rated
3,967
Hours billed
25 contracts, $100K+
12.5k
Followers
LinkedIn Rails audience
Fifteen years of Rails, mostly spent in other people's code
Most of my work starts the same way: an app that used to be fine, a team that is now afraid of it, and a founder who has been quoted a rewrite. A rewrite is almost never the answer. Finding the one thing that is actually breaking usually is.
I have spent 15 years on production Ruby on Rails — six as a senior engineer, five as a principal engineer owning architecture, two rebuilding a New York SaaS platform, and the rest freelancing for founders in the US, UK and Australia. Along the way I picked up React and React Native, so a Rails API and the app consuming it stay in one head.
On Upwork I am Top Rated with a 100% Job Success Score — 25 contracts, 3,967 hours billed, $100K+ earned. I write about Rails on Medium, publish daily to 12,500+ engineers and founders on LinkedIn, and built sqltoactiverecord.com for the Rails community.
2011
First production Rails app
Joined Nextbridge as a Rails engineer and shipped to production from day one. Learned the habit that still pays: understand the business goal before touching the schema.
2017
Principal engineer, owning architecture
Five years leading Rails architecture: database design, API contracts, background jobs, deploy pipelines. The shift from writing features to being accountable for whether the system holds.
2023
Rebuilt StatusGator's Rails platform
Two-year engagement with a New York SaaS. Front-end and back-end, 2,000+ hours, and their most prolific contributor. Third-party integrations across PagerDuty, Opsgenie, StatusPage and Slack.
2025
Independent Rails consultant
Now working directly with SaaS teams on rescue work: legacy upgrades, performance tuning, production stabilization. Short, scoped engagements that end with a codebase your team can maintain.
Don't take my word for it
Founders and CEOs who hired me, stayed, and came back.
Top Rated
Upwork · 100% Job Success Score
"It has been a pleasure working with Raza. He has been highly committed to writing clean, scalable code throughout the project, and to delivering features on time and always in line with expectations. In addition, he has a very positive and professional demeanor and strong communication skills. I look forward to hopefully working with Raza again soon."
Salman
Client · Rails + React Platform
"We hired Raza to help build out our redesigned product using Ruby on Rails. He was instrumental in that effort and worked on the project for almost a year. During that time, he worked in all aspects including front end and back end work. His strength and expertise lies with the back-end work and he ended up becoming the most prolific contributor to our project. If you have Ruby on Rails work, Raza can provide the expertise you need to bring your successful project to life."
Colin Bartlett
CEO · StatusGator
"If you are looking to hire React Native developers, Raza is the one! He has a clear understanding of clean code and follows a very efficient work procedure. He consistently delivers high quality results. It is a pleasure to work with Raza, because he understands requirements quickly. He thinks along with the requirements and points out things that might not have been considered — this is very helpful and clearly sets him apart from many of his competitors. He is also an excellent communicator."
Shoaib Iqbal
CEO · DeValley
"First time working with him and got a great experience. He's an expert on Ruby. Delivered before the due date and fixed minor issues really quickly. Understanding requirements very well and had really good discussion and responses. I'll positively hire him again next time. Very recommended for custom application development services!"
Mimi Mongkhonpreedarchai
CEO & Founder · Client
"I hired Mr Raza Hussain for creation of a Docker image for a Ruby on Rails application. Mr Raza is a very senior developer with a vast amount of knowledge. He was able to understand my situation and came up with a solution in no time. I am really thankful for his work as a consultant on Ruby on Rails and would reach out to him in the future."
Agastya T.
Entrepreneur · Ramkee Reddy
Technology stack
15 years of production experience across the full stack. These are the tools I ship with.
Upwork Top Rated
100% Job Success · $100K+ earned
Backend
Frontend
Mobile
Data & Infra
AI & LLM
What teams actually hire me for
Scoped engagements with a defined end, not an open-ended retainer. Most start with an audit and turn into two to eight weeks of focused work.
The app got slow
Rails Performance Rescue
Slow queries, N+1s, missing indexes, an undersized connection pool. I find the actual bottleneck instead of guessing at it. On one system, P99 latency went from 3.2s to 210ms without changing a line of Ruby — the pool was the problem, not the code.
- Query and N+1 elimination
- Index and schema tuning
- Redis caching strategy
- Connection pool and Puma sizing
- Load testing before you need it
Deploys are scary
Production Stabilization
When shipping takes a day of manual checking, your team is not slow — they are correctly afraid. I make deploys boring: safe migrations on large tables, Sidekiq that retries properly, monitoring that catches the silent failures.
- Zero-downtime migrations on large tables
- Sidekiq reliability and retry design
- CI/CD and rollback that works
- Error and performance monitoring
- Silent-failure audit (email, jobs, webhooks)
Stuck on an old version
Legacy Rails Upgrade
Rails 4 or 5, a Gemfile nobody has audited in years, and a test suite you do not trust. I run the upgrade incrementally with a migration path you can stop at any point. One recent cleanup cut boot time from 48s to 19s and turned a two-week upgrade into two days.
- Rails 4/5 → 7/8 with a staged path
- Gemfile audit and dependency removal
- Paperclip → ActiveStorage and similar
- RSpec / Capybara coverage where it is missing
- Ruby version upgrade with YJIT
The team that built it is gone
Inherited Codebase Audit
No documentation, no one who can safely deploy, and undocumented business logic hiding in cron jobs. I map what runs, what breaks, who holds the keys, and what it will cost to keep it alive — before you commit to a rewrite you may not need.
- What runs on a schedule, and what happens if it stops
- Access and credential risk review
- Security pass: mass assignment, SQL injection, XSS
- Maintenance path vs migration path, costed
- Written report your team can act on
Connect your stack
Rails APIs & Integrations
Clean Rails APIs for React and React Native frontends, plus the integration layer around Stripe, OAuth providers, webhooks and third-party feeds — with the error handling, retries and monitoring that stop an outside service from taking you down.
- REST and GraphQL API design
- React / React Native clients
- Stripe billing and subscriptions
- Webhook architecture and replay
- OAuth and SSO
Starting from zero
New SaaS Build
Sometimes there is nothing to rescue yet. I design and build the full product — schema, Rails backend, React frontend, auth, billing, admin — as a production-grade system rather than an MVP held together with tape.
- End-to-end Rails + React SaaS
- Multi-tenant architecture
- Stripe billing and subscriptions
- Role-based auth and permissions
- Admin dashboard and analytics
How an engagement works
Tell me what is broken. I will tell you what I would fix first
No call required, no deck, no pitch. Send me your stack and the symptom. Within two working days you get a short written answer: the first thing I would fix, what I would leave alone, and roughly what it would take.
If the answer is that you do not need me, that is what I will write. I would rather be the person you remember than the person who sold you a rewrite.
What I need from you
- Your Rails and Ruby version
- Roughly how big the database is
- What is actually going wrong, in your words
- Read access to the repo, if you are comfortable
Two audits a week, so the answer stays worth reading.
What you get back
The first thing I would fix
One specific problem, named, with the reasoning. Not a list of forty findings you will never action.
What I would leave alone
Knowing what not to touch is the part most audits skip. It is usually where the money is saved.
Maintenance path or migration path
Whether your Rails version can carry you another two years, or whether you are already on borrowed time.
A rough cost to fix it
So you can decide whether to hire me, hire someone else, or leave it. All three are fine answers.
Work I have shipped
Production systems for real clients, still running. Not a gallery — the evidence behind the audit.
SQL to Active Record
A free tool I built for the Rails community — powered by the Anthropic Claude API. Converts raw SQL into Ruby on Rails Active Record syntax instantly. Built to solve a real problem I kept hitting, now used by Rails devs worldwide.
StatusGator
Hired to help rebuild the redesigned product using Ruby on Rails. Worked on all aspects including front-end and back-end, becoming the most prolific contributor over a two-year engagement.
CryptoZombies
Interactive code school built on blockchain concepts. Developed backend and frontend features for a popular blockchain learning platform used by developers worldwide.
Deltabadger
Automated cryptocurrency DCA (Dollar Cost Averaging) platform. Built robust trading automation, portfolio tracking, and exchange integrations with real-time data processing.
Prograd
EdTech platform connecting students with mentors for career advancement. Built the full learning management system, video sessions, progress tracking, and payment integration.
Outdoor Sports Connection
Full-stack social network for outdoor sports enthusiasts. Delivered both the Rails API backend and the React Native mobile app with feeds, connections, user profiles, and location features.
MeetingKing
Professional meeting management SaaS with agenda creation, action item tracking, and integration with calendar systems. Built Rails backend with real-time collaboration features.
Want to know what I would do with yours? Start with the free audit.
Get a free Rails audit →Let's talk about your product
Send me the Rails version, roughly how big the database is, and what is going wrong. I reply within a few hours on WhatsApp, or within two working days by email. No prepared pitch needed.
Message me directly — fastest route
+92-(312) 426-4919 · Usually responds within a few hours
Upwork
View profile & reviews
Top Rated · 100% Job Success · 25+ contracts
support@razahussain.com
For detailed project briefs
Taking on new SaaS product and fractional CTO engagements now. I work with founders long-term — not one-off jobs. Response time: within a few hours. Covers time zones: US · UK · EU · AU.