Dubai, UAE | Senior Backend & Distributed Systems

Rakesh PD

Senior Software Engineer (IC3)

Backend & Distributed Systems | Golang | Ruby on Rails | High-Scale Architecture | Fintech & Microservices

Get In Touch → View Experience

Core Technologies

Gin

Ruby

Rails

gRPC

Pub/Sub

DigitalOcean

AWS

GCP

PostgreSQL

Redis

Docker

Kubernetes

Datadog

Grafana

01. ABOUT ME

Background & Core Expertise

Senior Software Engineer with 13+ years of experience building and scaling backend systems in Go and Ruby on Rails across the UAE, KSA, Bahrain, Singapore, and India.

Owns mission-critical billing, payments, and integration systems at HungerStation (Delivery Hero), supporting a platform processing an average of 600K orders per day. Experienced in taking complex systems end-to-end, from architecture and design through implementation, deployment, and production support.

My expertise spans distributed systems, Golang/Ruby microservices, high-performance APIs (REST, gRPC), event-driven architectures, and financial journal/ledger synchronization at scale.

⚡ Work Philosophy

"Clear communication, fast execution, ownership, and practical engineering. I focus on business impact, not unnecessary complexity."

❯ Key Strengths & Capabilities

✓ Building reliable backend systems in Go, Ruby on Rails

✓ Designing scalable microservices & distributed workflows

✓ API architecture (REST, gRPC), async services, event-driven design

✓ PostgreSQL optimization, caching, data modeling, system reliability

✓ Debugging production issues quickly with clarity & ownership

✓ Collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver real impact

✓ Leading features and unblock teams during critical timelines

02. WORK EXPERIENCE

Career History

Senior Software Engineer @ HungerStation (Delivery Hero)

Mar 2020 – Present Dubai, UAE

Own payment infrastructure for a 20M-user platform processing ~600K orders/day, with ~1,100 order-creation per minute and ~1,000 authorization per minute. Payment volume is led by Apple Pay (70%), followed by cards (17%), wallets (11%), and BNPL methods including Tabby, Mukafaa and Tamara.
Led the payment core migration from monolith to microservices, integrating checkout.com, Tabby, Tamara, STC Pay, Mokafaa, and Apple Pay tokenized checkout via gRPC and event-driven architecture.
Built a payment failover and auto-disabling mechanism, lifting payment acceptance rate to 98% while sustaining ~1,000 RPM on authorization traffic.
Integrated Incognia for geolocation-based fraud detection, reducing fraudulent transactions.
Designed a new Journal service to ingest, reconcile, and synchronize financial journals from external parties; own vendor dispute resolution and invoicing to the global finance entity across a 75,000+ vendor base (25,000+ invoices per cycle).
Launched a subscription service enabling 2,000+ vendors to receive payouts faster, with projected ARR of ~SAR 3M.

Senior Software Engineer @ TryCarriage.com

Sept 2019 – Mar 2020 Kuwait City, Kuwait

Migrated approximately 7.1M users to the Talabat ecosystem, enabling a large-scale platform transition while maintaining service continuity.
Led Ruby on Rails upgrades and remediated 260+ security vulnerabilities, reducing technical debt and strengthening application security.
Led the development of a vendor dispute management system, improving vendor satisfaction scores by 16% through faster and more transparent dispute resolution.

Technical Lead @ IBS Software

Mar 2018 – Sept 2019 Kochi, India

Led migration of TravelMob 5M+ users to the HomeAway ecosystem through automated feed ingestion and integration workflows.
Maintained and enhanced the Singapore-based TravelMob platform supporting 14,000+ property listings.
Delivered production deployments, large-scale data migrations, and integration pipelines using TDD/BDD practices, while resolving daily production issues end-to-end.

Senior Software Engineer @ 7NODES

Jan 2016 – Mar 2018 Ernakulam, India

Built Ruby on Rails backend systems for enterprise applications and contributed to product architecture and technical planning.
Coordinated with UI/UX to scope requirements and ship end-to-end features; drove reliability through QA testing and fast fixes for critical issues.

Software Engineer @ Red Panthers

Aug 2015 – Jan 2016 Ernakulam, India

Developed backend features in Ruby on Rails and provided remote production support to clients.

Software Engineer – Ruby on Rails @ PIT Solutions

Sept 2014 – Aug 2015 Trivandrum, India

Implemented Rails modules for enterprise products, including the VirtualX online examination system, and built concurrency improvements that raised throughput.

Software Developer @ Centre for Social Computing & Information Society

Jul 2013 – Aug 2014 Wayanad, India

Delivered backend development and deployment support, owning production bugs through to resolution.

03. SYSTEM PORTFOLIO

Key Projects & Platforms

HungerStation (Delivery Hero) 2021 – Present

HungerStation – Saudi Arabia Food Delivery Platform

Leading online food ordering platform connecting thousands of restaurants across Saudi Arabia & Bahrain. Processing ~600K orders/day with 98% payment acceptance rate failover, BNPL integration, Apple Pay tokenization, and Journal financial reconciliation across 75,000+ vendors.

Golang Ruby on Rails PostgreSQL gRPC Microservices

Centre for Social Computing (C4S) 2013 – 2014

PEECS – Government Engineering Entrance LMS

Kerala Public Engineering Entrance Coaching Scheme (PEECS) – Largest government LMS platform in India serving 400,000+ (4 Lakhs) student users across Kerala for entrance exam coaching.

Ruby on Rails EdTech Government LMS 400K+ Users

TryCarriage (Delivery Hero) 2019 – 2020

TryCarriage – Logistics & Food Delivery Service

Leading food delivery and logistics platform across Gulf countries. Successfully migrated ~7.1M users to Talabat ecosystem, resolved vendor disputes, and remediated 260+ security vulnerabilities.

Ruby on Rails Platform Migration Logistics Security

IBS Software 2018 – 2020

HomeAway & TravelMob – Vacation Rental Marketplace

Global vacation rental marketplace with >2,000,000 property rentals across 190 countries in 23 languages. Migrated 5M+ TravelMob users into HomeAway and Vrbo global ecosystems.

Ruby Grape Ruby on Rails CouchDB TDD/BDD

7NODES 2016 – Present

Circles.Life – Digital Telco Platform

Singapore-based digital mobile telco transforming regional communications. Built customizable mobile service features (voice, data, roaming) and real-time subscriber control APIs.

Ruby on Rails AngularJS REST APIs Digital Telco

PIT Solutions 2014 – Present

VirtualX – Online Examination System

Open-source automated examination management platform (LGPL license) supporting 12 question types (MCQ, Fill-ups, Drag & Drop, Matrix), candidate evaluations, and 5 graphical report formats.

Ruby on Rails Open Source (LGPL) EdTech MySQL

7NODES / Cocoon Venture 2017 – Present

Gain – Startup Crowdfunding Platform

Crowdfunding and investor platform for Cocoon Venture, enabling startup campaign tracking, real-time updates via ActionCable, and secure investment transactions.

Ruby on Rails Crowdfunding ActionCable PostgreSQL

7NODES / Cocoon Venture 2016 – Present

World Startup Expo – Exposition CMS

Content management system for Asia's largest startup exposition bringing together disruptive startups, C-level executives, VC funds, investors, and policymakers.

Ruby on Rails CMS Event Tech PostgreSQL

7NODES 2016 – Present

Eagle-Review – No.1 Hunting & Fishing Advisor

International travel review platform enabling outdoor sportsmen to evaluate shooting and fishing destinations worldwide through community reviews, media, and destination ratings.

Ruby on Rails Travel Tech MongoDB REST APIs

7NODES 2016 – Present

HashMyBag – C2B Retail Chat & In-Chat Payments

Customer-to-business messaging app featuring searchable merchant catalogues, private messaging, in-chat purchases, custom payment links, and ticket bookings.

Ruby on Rails AngularJS In-Chat Payment PostgreSQL

Centre for Social Computing (C4S) 2014 – Present

Arividam & C4S – Govt Educational Portal

Malayalam community educational portal for the Kerala Education Department (Wayanad district) and C4S web platform built for open information society initiatives.

Ruby on Rails EdTech Government Portal

7NODES / Independent 2013 – Present