TR Trae Robrock

Senior Rails Engineer & Fractional Technical Lead

Give me the difficult thing your team doesn't have time to figure out.

I help software teams solve hard engineering problems, ship neglected projects, and get aging Rails applications back under control.

Let's talk Hands-on engineering, architecture, and technical leadership.

Most useful when

  • 01 The codebase is showing its age
  • 02 Important work has no clear owner
  • 03 The problem crosses technical and product lines

Founder / engineer / operator

I founded and built Greenbits, then helped grow it from an idea into a company of roughly 100 people, more than $40M raised, and a successful exit.

0 → 100 employees
$40M+ raised
Exit successful outcome

01 / The work

Hard problems, owned end to end.

I work inside the team—not at arm's length. That usually means reading the code, finding the real constraint, and shipping the fix.

01

Rails rescue & modernization

Bring a mature Rails application back to a state where the team can move with confidence.

  • Ruby and Rails upgrades
  • Performance and production issues
  • Architecture and technical debt
  • Maintainability and developer speed

02

Senior engineering capacity

Join an existing team and take ownership of work that is difficult, stalled, or perpetually backlogged.

  • Complex integrations and APIs
  • Refactoring and architecture
  • Neglected projects that need to ship
  • Reviewing and hardening AI-generated code

03

Ambiguous technical projects

Turn an unclear problem into a practical plan, then stay in the code long enough to deliver it.

  • Internal tools and legacy systems
  • Infrastructure and performance
  • AI features and workflows
  • Product-minded technical discovery

02 / How I work

I've led engineering organizations. I still write code.

The founder background matters because difficult software problems are rarely just software problems. Priorities, product decisions, team structure, and technical tradeoffs tend to arrive tangled together.

I can move between a pull request and a founder conversation without losing the thread. When the work calls for it, I also help with technical direction, architecture, hiring, mentoring, due diligence, and engineering process.

The goal is not a deck or a grand rewrite. It is a sound decision, production code, and a team that can keep moving.

Working principles

01

Start with the system

Read the code, inspect production behavior, and understand the people using it before prescribing a fix.

02

Prefer steady progress

Reduce risk in small, useful steps. Most systems need careful improvement, not a dramatic rewrite.

03

Leave things clearer

Better code matters. So do better decisions, stronger engineers, and less mystery around the system.

Have a difficult problem?

Tell me what is stuck.

A short note with the context is enough. I'll tell you plainly if I can be useful.

[email protected]