What I walked into
The work covered the public NPQ registration service and a separate ECF/provider-side application. The systems had separate databases and synchronized data through REST APIs and background jobs.
Government education service
UK DfE NPQ
Maintained and extended two connected Rails applications supporting National Professional Qualification registration and ECF-side workflows.
UK DfE NPQ
2connected Rails applications
RESTcross-system synchronization
Rails 5→︎7upgrade preparation path
What had to be solved
Keep a live government service stable while adding new qualification flows across two codebases and preparing an older Rails application for a major framework upgrade.
My contribution
THE WORK I OWNED
01
Implemented a new mathematics-related qualification/course flow across both the NPQ and ECF applications, including backend and frontend flow changes.
02
Worked across two separate repositories/databases and maintained REST-based synchronization between them, with background jobs used during sync work.
03
Handled day-to-day maintenance, new requirements, unit tests and data-fix work when identity/NPQ/ECF records diverged.
04
Updated older gems and application dependencies so the codebase met Rails 6 requirements before another developer completed the Rails 7 upgrade.
05
Added database/contracts changes needed by new course behavior and supported data correction work across the connected services.
System view
HOW THE PIECES CONNECT
01NPQ registration
02REST API
03ECF/provider app
04Separate PostgreSQL DBs
05Background jobs
06Data synchronization
Outcome
The new course flow was delivered within the required deadline while the existing registration service continued to be maintained and prepared for the next Rails version.
Technology
RubyRuby on RailsPostgreSQLREST APIsBackground jobsRSpecCapybara