Salman Ansari

Skills

• Languages: Ruby, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Swift, Objective-C, PHP
• Frameworks & Libraries: Ruby on Rails, Hotwire/Turbo, React.js, GraphQL, Flask
• Mobile: iOS, UIKit, SwiftUI, Xcode · iOS Projects
• Design & UX: HTML & CSS, Figma, Framer, Web & iOS Animations, User Research
• AI Libraries: RubyLLM, OpenAI, LiteLLM
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis
• Testing: TDD, RSpec, XCTest, Jest, Cypress
• Infrastructure: AWS, Heroku, Docker, Codespaces

Experience

Principal Full-Stack Engineer — Unsupervised

October 2022 – Present · Remote

• Led a team of 4 migrating the core product from React/FastAPI to Rails — redesigned architecture, established Rails conventions, and taught/debugged with a Rails-new team
• Delivered full-stack features for Decision Apps, an enterprise document-analysis product used by AT&T to surface over $100M in business opportunities
• Improved performance of deepwork, an AI-powered code-review pipeline, from O(n) to O(1) reviewer invocations by restructuring batch review strategies and adding lightweight review-depth annotations
• Built Embedded Analyst, an LLM chat interface in the core product — designed multi-provider LLM abstractions, secure custom endpoints (including AT&T), and a streaming Rails Turbo UI
• Led migration from OpenSearch to pgvector/Postgres for semantic search across multiple PRs and teams
• Built ChatBetter, a web/mobile app for querying multiple AI models, comparing responses, and routing prompts

Senior Software Engineer — Unsupervised

March 2020 – January 2022 · Remote

• Built Fabric UI from the ground up — a configuration interface for data teams to manage Features, Opportunities, and analytical primitives for a proprietary pattern-analysis engine
• Built major React frontend components on the pre-migration app (React + FastAPI) using hooks
• Led a Dev UX overhaul of app infrastructure with 7–8 process dependencies, reducing setup time and toil
• Led React performance work on complex GraphQL issues; fixed a critical N+1 query, cutting load time 29s → 3.8s and payload 1.6MB → 125KB

Senior Software Engineer, iOS — Facebook

November 2018 – March 2020 · Menlo Park, CA

• Shipped Related Groups recommendations on Facebook Watch — owning iOS UI, Hack/PHP backend migrations, and GraphQL API work with backend teammates
• Authored proposals, aligned stakeholders, ran A/B experiments, and analyzed launch results
• Built a Favorites feature including a custom iOS animation, crafted in close collaboration with the designer with meticulous attention to every detail
• Joined Watch Social user research sessions and worked with PMs to translate findings into social feature direction
• Unblocked launches by resolving cross-team policy conflicts with PMs and driving alignment beyond my team

Co-Founder & CTO — Rested

October 2015 – November 2017 · San Francisco, CA

Built out of Atomic Labs incubator, Rested helped patients get screened and treated for sleep apnea at home. Raised $7.4M; featured on CNBC.

• Built the Rested iOS/Swift app — over 80% of users completed onboarding with sleep tracking and snore detection
• Designed and implemented a Ruby/Rails API and admin dashboard used by doctors and respiratory therapists
• Hired, managed, and scaled engineering/product teams to 10+ people, including a remote team in Canada
• Led product roadmap definition and user research process
• Designed and implemented an internal HIPAA security and privacy compliance program

Principal Engineer — Oracle (via Involver acquisition)

September 2012 – September 2015 · San Francisco, CA

• Led a team of 3 rebuilding the Oracle Social iOS app (Obj-C) for enterprise social inbox management and its Rails API
• Prototyped a graph-theory service to identify social influencers from network data
• Delivered internal talks on TDD and Animation, and keynote talks at Oracle OpenWorld
• Led integration of Involver’s AMP social web product into the Oracle Social Suite

Founding Engineer & Engineering Manager — Involver

September 2007 – September 2012 · San Francisco, CA

Joined as first employee, grew into Engineering Manager, and helped lead the team through Oracle acquisition.

• Built the Involver Social App Suite, the first self-serve social apps, used by millions of Facebook brands
• Architected automated subscription billing with TDD (custom plans, upgrades/downgrades, discounts, free trials)
• Led development of AMP (social message inbox) and SML, a custom language, framework, and IDE for social apps
• Built background message queueing system handling millions of messages per hour
• Built a dynamic multi-network abstraction layer with Ruby meta-programming for cross-platform customization
• Managed and scaled SF engineering team to 15 members

Projects

Wandering Spirits — Wrote and illustrated a book of modern fables for children and adults alike, published January 2024 in paperback, ebook, and audio.

Courier — Local-first literary magazine submission tracker for macOS. Built with Tauri (Rust + JavaScript), with AI-powered deadline scraping. Stores calls, deadlines, and submissions in plain Markdown files.

Upkeep — Personal home maintenance PWA built with Rails 8, Hotwire, and PostgreSQL.

Patents

Monitoring services and platform for multiple outlets — U.S. Patent 9,117,058 (August 2015). Granted for Involver work on a centralized UI, collection system, and unified hosting for social network content.

Education

University of Waterloo

Bachelor of Computer Science · 2002 – 2007 · Waterloo, Canada