Picture of Aaron Van Ruler

Aaron Van Ruler

Aaron Van Ruler :: Engineering Leader

Who I am

I'm an engineering leader with a passion for building great products and empowering teams to do their best work. During my career, I've had the opportunity to work across both product and engineering, taking on challenges like launching new products, scaling platforms to support thousands of users, and mentoring engineers to grow in their careers.

In my current role at Student First, I lead a team of five engineers (a mix of full-time and contractors) and work closely with product and customer success teams to prioritize work that makes the biggest impact. From implementing new client rollouts and refining team processes, I love balancing the human and technical sides of engineering leadership.

Resume

Student First Technologies

June 2024 - Present

SFT helps families access education funding programs from states and non-profits.

Engineering Manager (June 2024 - Present)

  • Lead a hybrid team of 4 full-time engineers and 2 contractors in developing and supporting the core product and ML platform.
  • Led technical delivery, migration, and onboarding for new enterprise client, adding 13,000 families to the platform.
  • Collaborate with product, customer success, and operations teams to develop strategy, create roadmaps, and execute client delivery.
  • Implement processes to prioritize feature requests, build new features, triage bugs, and delegate tasks to the engineering team.
  • Mentor engineering team on architecture, code reviews, and deployments.
  • Contribute new features as player/coach when necessary.
  • Technology Used: Ruby + Rails, PostgreSQL, RSpec
  • Integrations: Heroku, OpenAI

Rightworks

January 2023 - June 2024

Rightworks is the only cloud platform purpose-built for accountants and professionals.

AI Team Lead / Lead Engineer (August 2023 - June 2024)

  • Directed the strategy, roadmap, and launch of an AI product purpose-built for accounting professionals, growing to 2500+ users and a 40% retention rate.
  • Leveraged Shape Up to lead a team of marketing, product, and engineers in consistent, on-time delivery.
  • Operated as lead engineer to create and build V1 and contribute ongoing feature launches.
  • Established pricing, packaging, and reverse free trial model, generating $60k ARR in 3 months.
  • Led PLG initiatives across product marketing and sales enablement to support growth and adoption.
  • Represented the company at industry conferences as an AI SME, speaking to audiences of 400+.
  • Technology Used: Laravel, Vue 3, Inertia, PostgreSQL, Redis, Horizon, Cashier, PHPUnit
  • Integrations: OpenAI, HubSpot, MixPanel, Customer.io, Stripe, LaunchDarkly, Sentry, Azure DevOps

Innovation Strategist (January 2023 - July 2023)

  • Collaborated with executive leadership to research, validate, and launch new product initiatives.
  • Optimized the innovation process with structured tracking and scoring.
  • Built and tested prototypes that reduced risk of new initiatives and led to outsized investment for new projects.

Boardable

March 2021 - January 2023

Senior Engineer, Growth

Boardable enables mission-driven organizations in accomplishing their vision.

  • Led the engineering team in rearchitecting the application codebase, creating a design system to streamline development.
  • Prototyped and implemented micro-products to support PLG efforts, experimenting with user engagement strategies.
  • Developed custom integrations and a dynamic onboarding experience, increasing signup completion by 30%.
  • Crafted a growth strategy for new market expansion by identifying key use cases and retention metrics.
  • Technology Used: Laravel, Vue 2, MySQL, Redis, PHPUnit, GitHub
  • Integrations: HubSpot, Heap, Intercom, Chargebee + Stripe, Storyblok

Rootworks/Rightworks

June 2019 - March 2021

Rootworks is the premier firm-improvement platform for the accounting profession. Rootworks was acquired by Rightworks in May, 2020.

Product Team Manager (August 2020 - March 2021)

  • Managed cross-functional team of engineers, QA, and customer success.
  • Led product delivery by writing shaping documents, creating breadboards, and providing fat-marker sketches.
  • Prioritized and communicated projects to internal stakeholders across the organization.
  • Collaborated with new leadership through merger, transition, and hiring of additional product managers and engineers.

Senior Software Engineer (June 2019 - August 2020)

  • Designed and developed a custom CMS, scaling DevOps to deliver 500+ sites via Laravel Forge + Envoyer.
  • Created CI/CD pipelines to deliver codebases for CMS runtime, API, and UI.
  • Led engineering team to establish new delivery process based on Shape Up resulting in consistent, on-time shipping cadences.
  • Technology Used: Laravel, Vue 2, GraphQL, Redis, Websockets

Independent Consultant

September 2008 - December 2020

As an independent engineer, I worked with clients to build various platforms and web applications. I also provided road mapping and strategy sessions to ensure that projects were clearly defined and accomplished the client's goals.

  • Full stack development of a donation platform raising nearly $2mm.
  • Full stack development of the MVP, V1, and V2 of an RSVP platform which handled 50k RSVPS in it's initial launch.
  • Full stack development for this Webby-nominated site.
  • Managed all DevOps and all deploy processes.
  • Technology Used: Laravel, Vue, MySQL, CraftCMS

Indiana University

January 2014 - June 2019

Lead Frontend Developer

IU Studios is an internal agency that provides design and development services to the schools, departments, and units of Indiana University.

  • Created and maintained a university-wide, accessible pattern library and design system.
  • Lead frontend development for all major, public-facing websites.
  • Implemented a deployment strategy to deliver updates across all sites.
  • Led adoption of new frontend and backend tools, frameworks, and libraries.
  • Collaborated with cross-functional teams of content, design, and engineering.
  • Created, developed, and led 50+ person workshops, design sprints, and UX sessions.

Bloomington Code School: Mentor

September 2013 - April 2016

Mentor

The city of Bloomington offered six, 12-week sessions for anyone in the community interested in learning to code. I taught the full-stack development sections focused on Laravel + vanilla Javascript.

Converge Worldwide

May 2010 - February 2013

Web Solutions Developer

At Converge Worldwide, I was responsible for developing all aspects of the organization's online presence.

  • Developed a donation platform that generated $6mm in total donations and averaged $175k/month.
  • Facilitated renewed engagement with 10 regional offices and key stakeholders.

Technical Expertise

  • Backend: Full-stack web applications using Rails + Laravel. Expertise in jobs + queues, websockets, testing
  • Javascript: Vanilla JS, Vue, Inertia, IU's custom module system, some React, some Node.
  • DevOps: Servers, deployments, load-balancing and CI/CD processes.
  • Integrations/APIs: Payment gateways, CRMs, A/B testing, feature flags, and custom GraphQL.
  • Version Control: Expert in Git and patterns like GitFlow when more structure is needed.
  • Accessibility: HTML/JS that meets WCAG2.0 standards and accommodates everything from screen readers, contrast and visibility, and strict content hierarchy.

Product Expertise

  • Product discovery: Expert in jobs-to-be-done interviews and analysis to inform marketing, pricing/packaging changes, and new product offerings in various verticals.
  • Product delivery: Defined processes for successfully delivering and reporting on feature launches and KPIs. Expert in leading the Shape Up process.
  • Project management: Created quarterly/annual strategy and roadmaps to consistently meet stakeholder/client expectations.

Leadership & Strengths

  • Curious learner: Completed online certificates from Reforge (Growth Series, Retention and Engagement) and Harvard Online (Disruptive Strategy).
  • Ownership: As an independent developer, generated $250k+ in contract and retainer work by writing proposals, negotiating contracts, and pitching clients on the value I can bring to their project.
  • Workshops: Created and facilitated stakeholder workshops, design sprints, and interactive design sessions.

Endorsements

Krista Martin

"I have never met someone who can learn and implement like AVR. We often joked on our team about Aaron's love for podcasts. But, jokes aside, he has no limit to what he can learn. He knows how to get to the root of a customer's problem and turn it into real value. He is also a very talented full-stack engineer.

He was able to take a product that was full of gaps in user experience and develop a component-based UI that could pave a path for easier maintenance AND innovation. I highly recommend Aaron, and would absolutely work with him again."

Krista Martin

Partner, Novy Ventures

TJ Lewis

"Aaron's ability to quickly understand the needs of a product and ask the thought provoking questions allowed Rootworks to build a custom CMS for it's customers from the concept to product delivery in around 8 months.

Aaron played a large role in all aspects of that project from product management, scoping the work to be done, outlining timelines and helping the various stakeholders to understand what tradeoffs would be needed in order to deliver a working product on time. Aaron's understanding of product development will certainly provide immense value to any organization he is involved with."

TJ Lewis

Innovation Strategist