Hire the Top 3% of Freelance Ruby on Rails Developers

Market Faces Surging Demand for Ruby on Rails Developers

As the use of Ruby on Rails continues to grow, so does the market for professionals who specialize in it: In 2022, Ruby on Rails ranked as the second-most in-demand software engineering skill, with its developers having a 78% better chance of being contacted for an interview than the marketplace average.

So where can you find the best Ruby on Rails developers for hire? It’s relatively straightforward to locate developers with “Ruby on Rails” somewhere on their résumé, but finding a truly proficient expert in the field is a much greater challenge.

There are many Rails engineers who possess different levels of knowledge, experience, and motivation. Your goal is not to simply hire a Ruby on Rails developer who is qualified but to find the right one for your specific needs. Here we tell you how to find and hire the best Ruby on Rails developers for your project.

What attributes distinguish quality Ruby on Rails Developers from others?

A skilled Ruby on Rails developer can harness the power and efficiency of the Rails framework to swiftly build robust and scalable solutions tailored to your company’s needs. They can also support a preexisting development team to help architect new features, debug and optimize code, and align coding standards with best practices.

Here are the essential Ruby on Rails developer skills to look for when hiring:

• Ruby – The primary programming language used in any Ruby on Rails project. If you hire someone who hasn’t mastered Ruby’s syntax and best practices, you can expect their code to have readability issues. These concerns can multiply development costs, especially in long-term projects.
• Object-oriented programming (OOP) – A well-established programming paradigm that’s a natural fit for programming in Ruby, where everything is an object. A firm grasp of OOP principles like inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation is a vital skill for Ruby on Rails developers for creating clean, maintainable code.
• SQL databases– A widespread and scalable way of storing data structured in tables. Rails is designed to work with SQL databases in general and even includes built-in support for SQLite to facilitate Ruby on Rails scaffolding. Anyone looking to hire a Ruby on Rails developer will want to ensure candidates have a strong understanding of SQL. PostgreSQL and MySQL are popular with Ruby on Rails developers, but this aspect will depend on your requirements unless you’re hiring for a flexible greenfield project.
• Front-end development – Since Ruby on Rails is a full-stack technology, candidates must be well-versed in standard front-end technologies. At a minimum, these include:

• JavaScript – The de facto front-end programming language, supported by all major browsers for decades. Without JavaScript, web developers are severely limited in options for making a website or web app interactive and engaging.
• HTML – The basis for every web page. Ruby on Rails developers who stay informed as web standards and browsers evolve in parallel will be able to leverage new features sooner, lowering development costs and elevating user experiences.
• CSS – How developers encode the look of every element of a web page. Over time, many interactive features that used to require heavy amounts of JavaScript have become built into the CSS standard; developers who switch to the “CSS way” often see significant performance improvements. Thus, Ruby on Rails developers must keep current with CSS features amid the ever-changing landscape of the web.

• QA testing and QA engineering – The manual and automated ways, respectively, of ensuring that your code adheres to the desired functionality. Automated testing makes it possible to scale confidently by efficiently verifying your product even after adding new features or doing major code refactoring. For Ruby on Rails developers, this is a must-have skill.

Don’t neglect proficiency in essential software engineering tools like Git or Docker. The best Ruby on Rails developers will successfully blend these technical abilities with soft skills and excel at programming, problem-solving, and interpersonal communication—irrespective of whether you’re looking for a remote developer, a permanent on-site Ruby on Rails engineer, or someone in between.

How can you identify the ideal Ruby on Rails Developer for you?

When hiring a Ruby on Rails developer, you’ll need to consider not only their skills and attributes but also your project requirements to find the ideal candidate. You should line up your project’s scope, complexity, and budget with a developer’s skill range, technical acumen, and experience.

It also pays to gather a list of project-specific tools and methodologies, e.g., CI platforms like Jenkins, project management software like Jira, and advanced version control practices like Git flow. Familiarity with these can be a boon at crucial moments in a project’s development—like major upgrades—so this is a key factor when looking to hire a Ruby on Rails developer.

Rails is versatile and has been the framework of choice for renowned companies such as Airbnb, Twitch, Shopify, Coinbase, and GitHub. But these companies’ teams (and their products) couldn’t thrive without knowing how to rapidly classify experience levels when sorting through résumés of Ruby on Rails developers for hire.

Junior Ruby on Rails developers have:

• A basic understanding of the Ruby language and the Rails framework.
• Familiarity with the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, RESTful API design, front-end basics (HTML, CSS, and JS), and databases.
• Some experience with version control systems like Git.
• Sufficient confidence in handling smaller projects, which can benefit tight budgets, though they may still need guidance from senior developers.

Mid-level Ruby on Rails developers have:

• Strong proficiency in Ruby and Rails, understanding best practices and software design patterns.
• Experience with testing tools, front-end libraries, deployment tools, and performance optimization.
• A proven record of working on projects of varying complexity.
• Extensive knowledge of investigative techniques like git bisect and step-by-step debugging.
• The ability to spearhead some projects that require advanced features; they can be counted on to work independently and make significant contributions.

Senior Ruby on Rails developers have:

• Expert knowledge of Ruby and Rails, best practices, design patterns, and architectural principles.
• Extensive experience with test-driven development (TDD) or behavior-driven development (BDD), Agile programming methodologies, advanced Rails concepts, and scalable applications.
• Problem-solving skills, DevOps knowledge, and cloud computing platform acumen.
• Deep awareness of Git’s internal workings to the extent that they can guide version control processes and correct any Git misuse that may occur.
• The capacity to build and maintain large-scale projects and provide mentorship and technical leadership to other team members.

Regardless of expertise, candidates must keep up with new Rails releases, as they often introduce major improvements and clever new features that make development easier and faster.

How to Write a Ruby on Rails Developer Job Description for Your Project

Candidates need to know what will be expected of them and what value they will bring to the project and company. A clear, appealing, and well-thought-out job description is essential. Highlight the most relevant and enticing details to attract developers who will be proud to work on your project.

It can also be helpful to note the major technologies and tools your project uses (or will use), such as your choice of cloud platform, database, additional programming languages, and testing frameworks.

Finally, be clear about where your project is headed. If you are considering a significant pivot, like migrating a crucial part of your stack, be upfront about that in the job description.

What are the most important Ruby on Rails Developer interview questions?

Including a good mix of Ruby versus Ruby on Rails interview questions is wise since solid skills in the Ruby language are essential to working with the Rails framework. To gauge a candidate’s level of expertise, you might want to ask:

What is the difference between false and nil in Ruby?

In Ruby, false and nil are both falsy values. Still, they represent different concepts:

• false represents a boolean falsehood, indicating that a condition or statement is incorrect or that an expression evaluates to a falsy value. false is an instance of FalseClass.
• nil represents the absence of a value or the concept of “nothing.” It signifies that a variable or an expression has no value or that a method does not return any value. nil is an instance of NilClass.

While both false and nil evaluate as false in boolean contexts, they are not the same, as they belong to different classes and serve different purposes.

What does garbage collection do in Ruby on Rails?

Garbage collection in Ruby on Rails is an automatic memory management technique the Ruby language handles. It identifies and reclaims memory occupied by unused objects, using a generational system to improve performance.

Benefits of garbage collection (GC) in Ruby include:

• Program stability – Helps prevent memory leaks and promotes stability.
• Security – Mitigates risks by ensuring proper memory management.
• Developer focus – Allows developers to concentrate on application logic rather than memory concerns.

While garbage collection can optimize resource usage in some cases, developers must also be aware of the risks of memory fragmentation—and the resulting memory bloat—due to Ruby’s GC design. Qualified candidates should have experience identifying and resolving Ruby memory issues.

What is the difference between :string and :text in Rails?

In Rails, :string and :text are data types used to store textual information, but they differ in terms of storage capacity and use cases:

• A :string data type is conventionally used to store short pieces of text, usually with a maximum length of 255 characters. It is backed by the VARCHAR data type in most databases. Examples of when to use a string include storing names, email addresses, or short descriptions.
• A :text data type, on the other hand, is conventionally used to store larger blocks of text, often without a specific character limit. It is backed by the TEXT data type in most databases. Examples of when to use text include storing longer descriptions, user-generated content, or even entire articles.

During the interview process for mid- or senior-level developers, it is wise to ask questions about advanced software development concepts beyond Ruby on Rails, such as:

• Database management.
• Performance tuning and app health metrics.
• Optimizing end-to-end user flows.
• Effective code reviews.

Remember, even technical questions like these provide an opportunity to assess nontechnical skills. Soft skills such as effective communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and adaptability are vital to a Ruby on Rails developer’s cultural fit and success on your team.

Why do companies hire Ruby on Rails Developers?

Ruby on Rails developers can create comprehensive web applications, handling back-end and front-end development. However, companies most often hire a Ruby on Rails developer to focus primarily on back-end tasks, such as building APIs, while collaborating with other team members who work on front-end development (using JavaScript libraries like React) or mobile applications that connect to APIs.

Hiring a quality Ruby on Rails developer confers several advantages, including speed and cost-effectiveness. Ruby on Rails is a full-stack framework that includes most of the components necessary to create an app, which allows for rapid prototyping and MVP development compared to alternatives.

Another key factor in Ruby on Rails’ popularity is its breadth of performance capabilities. Rails allows developers to create high-performing applications rapidly using a vast array of built-in tools and libraries. Moreover, Rails frequently releases updates with new features to accommodate the ever-growing needs of modern web development without sacrificing quality or efficiency.

Ruby on Rails also offers a large and supportive community. This ensures access to extensive documentation and many open-source libraries and plugins, making the application development process more efficient and economical. And the Rails framework’s convention-over-configuration approach promotes clean, organized, and maintainable code, ensuring that projects remain scalable and easy to modify in the long run.

Ruby on Rails provides the web application foundation for a significant and growing number of companies. Hiring a quality Ruby on Rails developer will help you achieve faster, more cost-effective development and ensure scalability, maintainability, and high-quality code that can adapt to the ever-evolving needs of the digital world.

The technical content presented in this article was reviewed by Phil Pirozhkov.