About
Eugene Leontev – Senior Ruby / Ruby on Rails Engineer
Location: Tbilisi, Georgia
Role: Senior Ruby / Ruby on Rails Engineer
Focus: Scaling SaaS APIs (100K–1M+ requests/day), PostgreSQL performance, distributed backend systems
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/eugeneleontev
GitHub: github.com/madmatvey
Blog: madmatvey.github.io
About MeLink to section: About Me
I’m a Senior Ruby on Rails Engineer with 9+ years of experience designing and operating scalable SaaS applications and distributed backend systems. I specialize in large-scale Ruby on Rails applications, REST API design, and database architecture for high-throughput production systems handling 100K+ API requests per day. I’m particularly interested in AI-assisted software development and intelligent content automation systems.
I consider myself an engineer not from my first commercial project, but much earlier—from the habit of understanding how systems work and bringing tasks to a working result, even if it means stepping outside the formal boundaries of a role.
Before commercial development, I worked as a sound engineer at a radio station and concert hall: I designed recordings, assembled multi-channel setups, negotiated with venues and teams, solved problems from idea to implementation, and did quite a bit of soldering :)) This experience strongly influenced my engineering style: taking full responsibility, not “piece by piece.”
In commercial development, my main focus is complex backend systems where performance, data correctness, and resilience under load matter.
Key Projects & AchievementsLink to section: Key Projects & Achievements
- Scaling SaaS APIs & PostgreSQL performance
- Reduced core API endpoint latency from 400–500ms to 3–5ms through Ruby on Rails architecture improvements and PostgreSQL query optimization (indexes, denormalization, JOIN simplification).
- Operated and optimized production systems handling 100K+ API requests per day with 99.9% uptime.
- Designed event-driven architectures with Sidekiq-based background processing for financial and transactional workloads.
- Financial / fintech and API-driven platforms
- Built auditable financial transaction workflows with idempotent processing patterns for safe state transitions.
- Reduced manual verification workload by ~67% via backend automation in lending and fintech domains.
- Led integrations with external APIs and CRM platforms, ensuring reliable data synchronization and resilience.
- Leadership & remote collaboration
- Led and mentored engineering teams (up to 12 engineers) in remote, distributed environments.
- Introduced testing standards, CI pipelines, and code review practices to improve engineering quality and maintainable Rails architecture.
- Collaborated closely with founders, product managers, and customer-facing teams to deliver features from inception to production.
What I’m Passionate AboutLink to section: What I’m Passionate About
I’m particularly drawn to:
- Ruby on Rails application architecture — scalable web application and service-oriented architectures
- API design and integration — designing REST APIs and integrating external services and CRMs
- PostgreSQL performance optimization — query tuning, indexing strategies, and data modeling for high-throughput systems
- Asynchronous processing pipelines — Sidekiq, background jobs, and distributed processing
- Production observability & reliability — metrics, logging, debugging in live systems
- Reducing uncertainty — through communication with business and users
- Stabilizing and “bringing to reason” existing codebases
My Approach to WorkLink to section: My Approach to Work
I’m a proponent of “be your own manager”: documenting important decisions in text, working asynchronously, explaining trade-offs, and taking responsibility for imperfect but conscious decisions. I prefer documentation in tests and auto-generated artifacts, with key architectural decisions in brief text notes.
Open Source & CommunityLink to section: Open Source & Community
- Gasfree SDK — Ruby library for gasless TRC-20 transactions: github.com/madmatvey/gasfree_sdk
- Jekyll Crypto Donations — Jekyll plugin for crypto donations: github.com/madmatvey/jekyll-crypto-donations
- Technical Articles — madmatvey.github.io (including the SQL optimization article with ~31k views)
- Menhausen App — Telegram Mini App for mental health support: github.com/imfineapp/menhausen_app
- Workshops & Talks — Internal and public presentations (Thinknetica workshop: github.com/thinknetica/workshop_ruby_dev_with_ai)
Location & AvailabilityLink to section: Location & Availability
I currently live in Tbilisi, Georgia. I haven’t been in or worked from Russia since 2022. I’m comfortable with PST overlap. Relocation to Portugal is not a priority; in the near future, I’m planning to move to LATAM.
Personal BackgroundLink to section: Personal Background
Originally from Siberia, Russia. Before 2015, I was a radio DJ, sound producer, musician, and entrepreneur. I moved to Samara in 2015 and to Tbilisi, Georgia in early 2022, where I am today. Gamarjoba, genatsvale! მადლობა რომ კითხულობთ ამას!
I have a work permit as an individual entrepreneur in 🇬🇪 Georgia.
HobbiesLink to section: Hobbies
Sailing — Albert Einstein had a hobby of driving a sailboat. It helped him to understand how the universe works. I have a license to captain a sailboat for recreational purposes. Here is the sailing school I chose and warmly recommend to those who want to really learn how to sail a sailboat, not just get a captain’s license. I’ve also written about parallels between sailing and product development.
Music — Playing guitar can stimulate creativity and provide a relaxing break from work. Sometimes I make short videos of me playing guitar, here’s one of them.
DJ Streaming — Sometimes on the weekends I stream live, play deejay live mix on my YouTube channel Lazy Beat. Subscribe, give me likes!
CVLink to section: CV
Feel free to download my CV