Speakers
Meet the speakers who will be sharing their stories
All Speakers
Carmine Paolino
Chat with Work
Founder and CEO
AI engineer and open source contributor, Carmine has built large-scale systems at OLX, Capgemini, and the Alan Turing Institute. He's the creator of RubyLLM, bringing modern AI tooling to Ruby, and has co-founded startups like Freshflow, and Chat with Work. Carmine loves Ruby, deep learning, and producing electronic music in Berlin.
Marco Roth
Independent
Consultant
Full-stack Ruby on Rails developer and open source enthusiast, Marco is a core contributor to Hotwire and StimulusReflex. He's passionate about pushing the boundaries of real-time, server-rendered apps with HTML-over-the-wire, and maintains several key libraries in the Hotwire and Rails ecosystem.
Obie Fernandez
Shopify
Principal Engineer
Obie Fernandez is a Ruby and Rails pioneer, and best-selling author of The Rails Way. With three decades in software and a string of successful startups—including Hashrocket and Andela—he's helped shape the Rails community from the start. Obie now leads AI and developer experience initiatives at Shopify, and still finds time to DJ and make music in Mexico City.
Edward Kim
Gusto
Co-founder and CTO
Edward leads the long-term technology roadmap for Gusto, including major platform initiatives such as Artificial Intelligence. He also empowers Security and IT. Before co-founding Gusto, Edward was the CEO and co-founder of Picwing, a Y Combinator startup and photo-printing platform. Edward holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Panel
CTO Roundtable
Ryan King
Chime Financial
Co-founder
Ryan King is the co-founder of Chime and has served in varying positions overseeing the company’s product and technology organizations. Ryan was previously VP of engineering at Plaxo until its acquisition by Comcast, and then worked at Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center as chief technology officer and vice president. He also held senior engineering roles at Liberate Technologies and Microsoft. Ryan earned a B.S. in computer science & engineering from UCLA and an M.S. in computer science from Stanford University.
Panel
CTO Roundtable
Adrian Marin
Avo
Founder
Adrian is a product-minded engineer, open-source maintainer, the author of Avo and Marksmith for Rails, and co-host of Friendly.rb conference and Friendly.show podcast.
Alan Ridlehoover
Cisco
Senior Engineering Manager
Passionate Rubyist. Empathetic leader. Fallible human. Swell photographer. Rusty drummer. Loving husband & twins dad. Owner of too many hats, given I only have the one head.
André Arko
SunChaser.io
Founder
André thinks Ruby is pretty neat. He's been using Ruby since 2003, Rails since 2004, and on the Bundler team since 2009, and wrote _The Ruby Way_ (3rd Ed.) in 2015. These days, he's a principal engineer for hire at cloudcity.io while building tools to make on-call better at sunchaser.io.
Ben Sheldon
Frontdoor Benefits
Co-founder and CTO
Ben is the author of GoodJob, an Active Job backend. A Rails developer for over 10 years, he has worked at GitHub, OkCupid Labs, and Code for America. Ben is currently co-founder and CTO of Frontdoor Benefits.
Brandon Shar
ezCater
Staff Software Engineer
Brandon is a full-stack developer currently leading AI product engineering at ezCater. He's the co-author of Inertia Rails and Inertia Django and is passionate about product-focused development, batteries included frameworks, and changeable code. Currently hooked on MCP servers, AI-coding tools, and runDisney races.
Brandon Weaver
Amazon One Medical
Senior Software Engineer
Brandon is an artist turned programmer who teaches Ruby with a series of colorful cartoon lemurs going on storybook adventures. This time though? He's going deep on AI and Rails.
Brian Knoles
Bellawatt
CTO
Brian leads development at Bellawatt, a software consultancy that works with energy companies. He's a co-author of Inertia Rails and loves using Rails and React together. He's known to say "I wonder..." a lot, and he often spends the daily walks with his inexhaustible dog lost in thought.
Colleen Schnettler
Simple File Upload, SaaS Marketing Gym
Founder
Colleen is a Rails dev, AI consultant, and startup founder. She built Simple File Upload and HelloQuery (a TinySeed-backed startup), then started SaaS Marketing Gym to help technical founders grow. When she's not building or teaching, she's climbing mountains because they're the only thing that won't pivot.
Dave Thomas
Pragmatic Programmers, LLC
Nuisance
Dave Thomas is likely the oldest living Ruby developer.
Enrique Carlos Mogollán
Handshake
Software Engineer
Enrique enjoys writing software, reading, traveling and it's a big fan of spicy food.
Evgeny Li
BemiDB
Co-founder and CEO
Evgeny created popular open-source Ruby and Rails projects used by companies like GitLab, Netflix, and AngelList. A passionate speaker, he's presented at RailsConf, on Ruby Rogues, and at local meetups. After a decade of Ruby experience at various companies, he decided to build his own startup.
Fito von Zastrow
Cisco
Staff Software Engineer
Fito is a Staff Software Engineer @ Cisco's Network Platform. He is a SF Bay Area transplant from Asunción, Paraguay. He enjoys hiking, watching soccer, video games, and pair-programming.
Jeremy Evans
Ubicloud
Principal Engineer
Jeremy Evans is a Ruby committer who focuses on fixing bugs in Ruby. He the lead developer of Sequel, Roda, Rodauth, and many other Ruby libraries. He is the author of "Polished Ruby Programming".
José Valim
Tidewave
Founder
José Valim is the creator of the Elixir programming language and Chief Adoption Officer at Dashbit, the company behind Tidewave and Livebook. A former Rails Core team member, José authored Crafting Rails Applications, received a Ruby Hero award, and contributed to several open source projects.
JP Camara
Wealthbox
Principal Engineer
Ruby committer. Blog writer. Concurrency enthusiast. Principal Engineer at Wealthbox CRM.
Justin Bowen
Active Agent
Founder
Justin is the creator of Active Agent, the first truly Rails-native AI framework, where Agents are Controllers. Since 2015, he's been building real-world AI products in agriculture, healthcare, HR tech, and more, with a specialization in computer vision. His work with Active Agent combines his extensive experience in Python and Next.js, bringing it to Rails with the goal of making Ruby the language of choice for new startups in the AI age.
Kasper Timm Hansen
kaspth.com
Rails consultant
Kasper is a staff-level Rails consultant, who runs Rails source deep-dives for teams helping them level up faster. He was on the Rails core team from 2016 to 2022 and the top 11th contributor when he left. He shipped several major features, and reviewed & merged over a thousand contributor PRs.
Mike Perham
Contributed Systems
CEO
Mike is the author and maintainer of Sidekiq, the leading background job framework for Ruby. He's developed open source software for Ruby since 2005 and lives in Portland, OR.
Naijeria Toweett
Mama Tech Limited
Founder & CEO
Naijeria entered the Ruby world at Friendly.rb 2023. Since then, she's grown from newcomer to community builder—now serving on the Ruby Central board and helping lead WNB.rb Africa Chapter. She's a product manager turned product engineer, focused on inclusive, user-centered tech.
Ngan Pham
Gusto
Software Engineer
Ngan is a prolific open source contributor and Rubyist with a knack for scaling systems and building strong engineering teams. He's known for mentoring developers and sharing insights on everything from Rails architecture to developer happiness. Outside of work he loves traveling with his family.
Noel Rappin
Chime Financial
Staff Software Engineer
Noel is the co-author of Programming Ruby 3.3 and other technical books in the Ruby Community. He's dedicated to making Ruby joyful and productive for developers, and is known for building community and championing better tools and practices. You can find Noel online at noelrappin.com.
Paweł Strzałkowski
Visuality
CTO
CTO, consultant and full-stack developer since the 90s. Author of many articles showing a creative approach to using Rails. Currently excited about AI's potential and cross-tech discoveries. Frequent speaker at conferences/meetups and a big supporter of the European Ruby scene. Builds games for fun.
Rachael Wright-Munn
Looking for Work
Software Engineer
Rachael has been livestreaming open-source contributions and programming games on Twitch since 2019. This journey led her to voice-acting in indie programming game, One Dreamer, building an app for meeting friends at conferences, MeetAnother.day, and contributing to Rails, forem, GitLab, Ruby For Good, and many other projects.
Sam Poder
Hack Club
Software Engineer
Sam is a software engineer at Hack Club and a third-year Computer Science & Linguistics student at UC Berkeley. He enjoys making things, hackathons and going on random adventures (often using public transit).
Sarah Mei
Sarah is a software engineer, writer, and technical advisor with over two decades of experience building & leading development teams. Formerly Head of Eng at BackerKit, she now focuses on the intersection of AI & software development, exploring how emerging tools are reshaping how we build.
Svyatoslav (Svyat) Kryukov
Evil Martians
Senior Backend Engineer
Svyat is passionate about bridging backend and frontend worlds in Ruby. He's the creator of Skooma for strong interfaces and TurboMount for bringing modern widgets to Hotwire, and a key contributor to Inertia Rails. When he's not coding, Svyat is a true coffee geek, always searching for the perfect pour over setup.
Takashi Kokubun
Shopify
Staff Developer
Takashi Kokubun is a Ruby committer and a member of Shopify's Ruby Infrastructure team. He's currently working on ZJIT, the next generation of YJIT. He has been working on JIT compilers for Ruby since 2017.
Tia Anderson
Tia is a Ruby on Rails developer, RailsConf 2025 Scholar, and creator of Peace of Mind—a journaling and gardening app powered by CRUD and calm. She’s on a mission to build tools that heal, not just hustle. When not coding, you’ll find her in the garden… or journaling about it.
Join as a Speaker
The full program is now available! We are grateful to each and every application that was submitted. All applicants were contacted over email. Thank you for being an amazing community! We are excited to make this event inspiring and meaningful together with everyone participating.