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/thiago.lu

Applied AI on 11 years of Rails

I integrate AI models into systems that are already in production. Standardized output, predictable cost, human review at the steps that decide.

I connect systems and move data between them without stopping operations. I work with companies in Brazil, the United States and Canada.

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Capabilities Background Education

Capabilities

2015–2026

Skills, lessons and working rules picked up across projects.

AI Engineering

  • Document extraction with the output bound to a schema
  • Invariant checks before an output becomes data
  • Deterministic templates after the first read, so the model is not called again
  • RAG over codebases and sensitive documents
  • Long-term memory through summarization and vector search
  • Agent orchestration in parallel, isolated by worktree
  • Cost, time and tool ceilings per role
  • Custom MCP servers, with per-role gating and a sandboxed database
  • Event-triggered agents, with a queue, a worker and a pull request at the end
  • Evals and regression guardrails
  • Asynchronous calls, off the application's critical path
  • Prompts owned by the domain expert, not by engineering
  • Model provider swaps without touching the consumer

Anthropic API

Claude Code

MCP

Claude Agent SDK

Gemini API

Languages

  • Gradual typing over a legacy codebase
  • Test suites and TDD as a net for refactoring
  • Tests that have to fail first, before they go in
  • Deterministic engines: same seed, same result on any machine
  • Fixed-point arithmetic and decimal scale conversion in contracts
  • Native bindings inside a game server
  • Headless suites running in seconds, to fit inside an agent's loop

Ruby

JavaScript

TypeScript

Python

C++

GDScript

Solidity

Back end, APIs and front end

  • Integrations written for the other side to fail: retry, idempotency and reconciliation
  • Inbound and outbound webhooks, with forwarding that is checked
  • Periodic reconciliation of the event a webhook missed
  • Public APIs consumed by partners, and business integration with ERPs
  • REST to GraphQL migration, trading controllers for services and adapters
  • Rails engines attached to a third-party application
  • Major Rails upgrades with the application in production
  • Cross-platform authentication, with cohorts coexisting through the transition
  • Background jobs and heavy processing outside the request cycle
  • Structured logging and investigation of low-frequency bugs
  • Test coverage on a legacy codebase, until deploying becomes routine
  • Bot automation where the partner has no API
  • Front-end migration between frameworks, with the product live
  • Offline-first front ends, usable with no network

Ruby on Rails

React

Sidekiq

GraphQL

Vue

Vuetify

REST APIs

FastAPI

Hotwire

Next.js

Node.js

SvelteKit

WebRTC

Highcharts

PWA

Data

  • Data lakes structured from scratch, from raw data to an automated decision
  • Incremental sync between the operational system and the warehouse
  • A single record format for domains that do not talk: entity, metric, time, value and context
  • Row-Level Security inside the database
  • Time series in hypertables
  • Vector indexes for semantic search
  • Query and index tuning up to the response SLA
  • Third-party API ingestion with its own cache and retry policy
  • Database migration across platforms preserving integrity

PostgreSQL

BigQuery

pgvector

Infrastructure and deploy

  • Infrastructure sized by the invoice, not by the theoretical peak
  • Containers with scale-to-zero where the traffic allows
  • Hand provisioning where scale-to-zero does not fit
  • Serverless architecture for bursty load
  • CI/CD pipelines with automated deploys
  • Agents running inside the pipeline, with human approval at the merge
  • Root cause of instability after an operating system change
  • Migration and sync of large file volumes between servers
  • Replacing a licensed tool with a service of our own, to get out of lock-in

AWS

Google Cloud

Docker

Heroku

Ansible

NGINX

Ubuntu Server

CI/CD

Firebase Hosting

Integration, migration and guarantees

  • Parity proved by replay of real requests against both versions
  • Per-API feature switch to flip the key, and to flip it back
  • Shards synced with a shadow database, to check the migration in production
  • Rollback plans written before the cutover
  • Whole applications migrated across languages, with operations live
  • A survey of the real dependencies before designing the cutover
  • Integration with ERPs, clinical labs and credit bureaus
  • Clinical message exchange over HL7
  • Reconciling two data models after an acquisition
  • Root cause with an investigation document and a task breakdown for the team

TDD

Contract Testing

Serasa

Background

2015–2026

Each line is a contract or a role, identified by the client's industry.

Healthcare and e-commerce platform (US/Canada)

2025 – 2026

Senior Ruby on Rails engineer, integrations team · Contract via Toptal

Ruby on Rails · PostgreSQL · Sidekiq · REST APIs · Anthropic API

Global B2B freight SaaS

2025 – 2025

Senior back-end engineer · Contract via Toptal

Ruby on Rails · Rails Engines · REST APIs · Docker · CI/CD

Consumer credit fintech (Brazil)

2024 – 2025

Software engineer · Project

Ruby · Python · BigQuery · TypeScript · Cloud Run

Healthcare e-commerce (US/Canada)

2024 – 2024

Full-stack developer · Contract via Toptal

Ruby on Rails · React · GraphQL · AWS Lambda

Consumer credit fintech (US)

2023 – 2023

Rails developer · Contract via Toptal

Ruby on Rails 7 · Node.js · Contract Testing · REST APIs

Pathology lab (US)

2023 – 2023

Rails developer · Contract via Toptal

Ruby on Rails · Ansible · NGINX · Ubuntu Server

Healthcare staffing platform (US)

2021 – 2023

Senior Ruby on Rails developer · Contract via Toptal

Ruby on Rails · React · Heroku · TDD

Construction industry software

2018 – 2021

Head of Product

Ruby on Rails · Vue 2 · Vuetify · GraphQL · PostgreSQL · AWS Lambda · GCP

Digital marketing platform

2015 – 2018

Full-stack developer

Ruby on Rails · React · JavaScript · PostgreSQL · AWS Lambda · Docker · Sidekiq

See each role in detail on the resume 

Education and languages

Information Systems
Bachelor's degree at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2018–2021.
Materials Engineering
Coursework at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, 2015–2018.
Portuguese
Native language.
English
Professional, in daily use with teams in the United States and Canada since 2021.

Availability

open to projects

What needs to be connected, migrated or taken out of manual operation.

Get in touch How I work