Hire Me
Jason Ellis — Software Engineer, Rubyist, Lifelong Tinkerer
I’m a calm, considerate problem solver who has been shipping software professionally for over 25 years. Right now I’m Head of Development at Ambiki — a modern EMR built for pediatric SLPs, OTs, and PTs — and a Senior Software Engineer at Sidekick Therapy Partners.
If you’re looking for a senior engineer who can lead a team, own a product end-to-end, or quietly turn a tangled codebase into something you actually want to work on — that’s the part of the job I love.
Why hire me
- I’ve been doing this a long time. IBM Rational Build Forge, Hoover’s, the Austin American-Statesman, Faithvillage, Codeup, Ambiki. I’ve architected UIs, run engineering teams, founded companies, and written production code in just about every era of the web.
- I built and sold a company. Palavista — the first digital music meta-crawler on the internet — sold to ChangeMusic Inc. for $330k right before Napster ate the world. Good timing is a skill.
- I lead small teams really well. Former CTO of Grok Interactive. Currently Head of Development at Ambiki. I’ve mentored junior engineers, run code review culture, and shipped through Codeup’s bootcamp pipeline.
- I’m a generalist who specializes. Deep Rails. Comfortable everywhere else.
- I show up. Calm under pressure, allergic to drama, and genuinely good to work with. Five years in the U.S. Army and 15+ in law enforcement will do that to a person.
Current stack
This is what my day-to-day actually looks like in 2026 — not a list of every acronym I’ve ever touched.
- Ruby on Rails (modern Rails, Hotwire / Turbo / Stimulus, ViewComponent, RSpec, Sidekiq)
- PostgreSQL as the default datastore; Redis for caching and queues
- TypeScript / modern JS when an SPA is genuinely the right call — otherwise Hotwire and ship it
- Tailwind / SCSS for styling, with an eye on accessibility and performance
- AWS, Heroku, HealthcareBlocks — pick the boring infra, get back to the product
- GitHub Actions for CI/CD, with a strong opinion that tests should actually run
- Claude Code & modern AI tooling integrated into my workflow — I write more code, more carefully, than I ever have
- Observability that matters: Datadog, structured logging, dashboards people actually look at
What I’m great at
- Taking a vague product idea and turning it into a working, shippable Rails app — fast.
- Walking into an existing codebase, finding the load-bearing weirdness, and quietly fixing it without breaking anything.
- Code review, mentoring, and building team norms that don’t suck.
- Saying “no” to scope creep without making anyone feel bad about it.
- Production debugging at 2 AM. (I’d rather not, but I can.)
How I work
- Remote-first, async-friendly. Based in Oriental, NC — salt life on the Carolina coast. I keep a real schedule and overlap generously with US time zones.
- Small teams, real ownership. I do my best work in startups and small product orgs where I can see the user on the other end of the code.
- Pragmatic over purist. I love elegant code; I love shipped code more.
- Long-term relationships over one-offs. Most of the people I’ve worked with, I’ve worked with for years.
Selected highlights
- Head of Development — Ambiki (2024 — present). Leading engineering on a healthcare EMR used by pediatric therapists across the country.
- Sr. Software Engineer — Sidekick Therapy Partners (2020 — present). Building teletherapy and clinical tooling for SLPs, OTs, and PTs.
- CTO / Co-founder — Grok Interactive (2013 — 2016). Full-stack consultancy. Built XChangeClub, Dynasty Owner, and shipped the engineering side of Codeup, a 9-week intensive coding bootcamp in San Antonio.
- UI Lead / Architect — IBM Rational Build Forge (2005 — 2011). Architected the rich-client web UI for IBM’s flagship build management product. AJAX, accessibility, globalization, the works.
- Founder — Palavista (1997 — 2000). First digital-music meta-crawler on the internet. Sold to ChangeMusic Inc. for $330k.
The full work history lives on the résumé.
Let’s talk
If you’ve got a Rails app that needs a steady hand, a product that needs to actually ship, or a team that needs a senior engineer who’ll make everyone around them better — I’d love to hear about it.
