About Me

Ariel Fogel

I'm a Software Engineer and Researcher with close to a decade of experience working in different positions in and around research and development. I'm passionate about using technology to improve how we learn.

Cold, Medium, and Hot Takes

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Dealing with Direct Upload Attachments in Tests

Dealing with Direct Upload Attachments in Tests

The process of directly uploading an attachment means that you are attaching a blob using the blob's `signed_id`. Read on to see how to access a blob's signed_id before the blob is attached to your ActiveRecord model instance in an RSpec suite.

About me

Professionally, I spend time thinking about web development, learning, and design. This space houses my thoughts on these topics, among others.


When I'm not working, I'm practicing yoga, cooking, or playing jazz.


Let's create together

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Experience

Founding Engineer and Researcher
Pillar Security
Tel-Aviv, 2023 - Present

Software Engineer
The Agency of Learning
Remote, 2023

I design and implement open source collaboration tools for developers using Ruby on Rails 7, Hotwire, and Tailwind. Responsibilities include design (wireframing), end-to-end implementations of features, writing design documents and other documentation, setting up CI/CD, and code review.

Technical Founder
Edurrhaphy LLC
Remote, 2021 - 2023

Using Ruby on Rails 7, I built a fully functional flashcard application to teach surgeons anatomy. Platform includes both authoring tools to create content in addition to a flashcard game.

Researcher
The MAGIC lab @ UW-Madison
Madison, WI, 2020 - 2022

I built a serverless augmented reality game used as the basis for four publications. Architected and managed a team of research interns contributing to the development of the platform, including performing code review on contributions

Data Engineer
MasterClass
2018-2019

I designed analytical views reflecting business processes to be used for the company’s OLAP cube infrastructure. Additional responsibilities included building Looker dashboards to communicate critical business metrics to stakeholders througout the organization

Software Engineer
Computational Approaches to Human Learning Lab @ UC-Berkeley
2017-2018

I expanded functionality of a data visualization tool enabling researchers to explore high dimensional datasets using d3.js. Managed a team of programmers building out a course recommendation system used by hundreds of students at UC-Berkeley.

Software Engineer
Bloc
2015-2017

Working with the CFO, I architected and led the planning, implementation, TDDing, and deployment of a critical upgrade to the company’s payments/billing infrastructure. I also worked with designers, product managers, and customer success teams to implement various student-facing and customer support features

Education

    Master of Arts in Learning Sciences
    UW Madison, Madison, WI
    2019 - 2022

    Dogtags
    Dev Bootcamp, San Francisco, CA
    2014, "I must create my own system or be enslaved by another."

    Bachelor of Arts in Behavioral Economics; Music
    Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA
    2007 - 2011

    Languages

    Ruby

    Javascript

    Typescript

    HTML/CSS

    SQL

    Python

    R

    Elixir

    Technologies

    FastAPI

    PostGresQL

    Docker

    AWS

    NextJS

    React

    Tailwind

    Rails

    Figma

    Balsamiq

    Sinatra

    Flask

    Astro