Ross Paffett
Software Engineering Manager at Ontra
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRoss Paffett is a seasoned software engineering manager with 16 years of experience leading Ruby teams and building reliable APIs and developer infrastructure across startups and large platforms. Currently managing engineering at Ontra after leading Grubhub’s SRE and CI/CD efforts, he combines hands-on backend development with people leadership and cross-site coordination. His open-source contributions to projects like octokit.rb and Minecraft TerrainControl show a practical focus on git-level tooling and complex back-end logic. A Boston native based in San Francisco since 2015, he brings a background in product-facing APIs and integrations from his long LevelUp tenure through its acquisition. Outside work he’s an avid hiker and botany enthusiast—skills he says complement his systems-thinking and patience for long-running projects. He also trained in backcountry leadership, reflecting a hands-on, safety-minded approach to leading teams and operations.
16 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Leadership Group Dynamics Backcountry Survival, Leadership Group Dynamics Backcountry Survival at National Outdoor Leadership School
English, French, māori
Github Skills (14)
javas10
configuration-management10
minecraft10
octokit10
api10
sdk10
forge10
github-api10
apidoc10
spigot10
java10
ruby10
git9
rspec8
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
MCTCP/TerrainControl
Jan 2012 - Jan 2012
Minecraft Terrain Generator for SpigotMC and Forge
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:14 commits in 11 days
Contributions summary:Ross primarily contributed to the back-end logic of the Minecraft terrain generation project. Their work involved modifying the resource queue and implementing block data handling for ores, plants, and replaced blocks. They also refactored code to use `setRawTypeIdAndData()` for block replacements, and added the ability to specify block data using dot notation. The commits focused on improving the configurability and flexibility of the terrain generation process.
forgeminecraftminecraft-terrain-generationspigotspigot-plugin
octokit/octokit.rb
Jun 2012 - Jun 2012
Ruby toolkit for the GitHub API
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:8 commits in 1 day
Contributions summary:Ross primarily contributed to the Octokit Ruby library by adding features related to Git object manipulation. Specifically, they implemented methods for creating and managing blobs, trees, and commits within a GitHub repository. They also added documentation, enhancing the usability of the library's API methods. These contributions indicate a focus on expanding the library's functionality for interacting with GitHub's underlying Git data structures.
rubysdkoctokit-rb
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