Nick Kelly
Chief Technology Officer at OptSpot
Phoenix, Arizona, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNick Kelly is a seasoned technology leader and CTO with over 16 years of hands-on experience building web platforms, primarily in Ruby on Rails, and 18 years working professionally on the internet. He combines product-minded architecture and DevOps expertise with a strong focus on Developer UX, having led engineering teams at SXSW, Wildbit, and now OptSpot. Nick is a pragmatic full-stack engineer who contributes to notable open-source projects like refinerycms and Basecamp’s kamal, reflecting deep backend and deployment tooling skills. He also founded a regional newsletter, The PHX Brief, demonstrating a knack for shipping small, user-focused products. Based in Kalispell, Montana, he remains available for selective contract work and prefers engagements that let him shape both technical direction and developer experience. An attention to small UX details—like email defaults and share-link behavior—illustrates his habit of improving systems where users and developers intersect.
15 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Information Systems, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Information Systems at Arizona State University, W. P. Carey School of Business
Stackoverflow
11,308reputation
609kreached
16answers
3questions
database
top-1%
activerecord
top-1%
rails-migrations
top-1%
ruby
top-1%
ruby-on-rails
top-1%
Github Skills (43)
ruby-rails10
javascript10
docker10
rails-migrations10
rails10
dockers10
ruby10
php10
activerecord10
devops10
ruby-on-rails10
database10
back-end-development9
command-line-interface9
erb9
Programming languages (16)
Github contributions (5)
basecamp/kamal
Apr 2023 - Feb 2025
Deploy web apps anywhere.
Role in this project:
DevOps Engineer & Back-end Developer
DevOps Engineer & Back-end DeveloperContributions:18 reviews, 18 PRs, 90 comments in 1 year 10 months
Contributions summary:Nick primarily contributed to the project by implementing features related to service name validation and integration of ERB trim mode, indicative of back-end development tasks. They also worked on enhancing the deployment process by integrating SSHKit and making changes to the Traefik configuration, showcasing DevOps skills. Further contributions include adding a server exec command for running ad-hoc commands directly on the server and various improvements to the logging functionalities, particularly around the grep options, suggesting expertise in system administration and debugging.
containerszero-downtimezerorailsdocker
refinery/refinerycms
Jun 2010 - Mar 2011
An extendable Ruby on Rails CMS that supports Rails 6.0+
Role in this project:Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:7 commits in 9 months
Contributions summary:Nick made several contributions to the `refinerycms` repository, focusing on backend logic and email functionality. They modified inquiry settings, adding accessor methods and updating the default subject line in outgoing emails. Furthermore, the user addressed code redundancies and adjusted the welcome page to include the port number. The user's work also touched upon file structure within the inquiry plugin.
ruby-on-railscmsrails-cmsrailsrefinery-cms
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