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Software Engineer · Researcher · Open Source Contributor

Ruby on Rails engineer. Civic tech. Empirical software research.

I build civic technology used by governments and institutions. IEEE Senior Member, published researcher on Ruby on Rails ecosystems, technical judge at international hackathons.

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About me

Anna Topalidi

Software engineer specializing in participatory democracy platforms. Core contributor to Decidim, the UN-recognized Digital Public Good, working across core and community modules.

Empirical researcher on Ruby on Rails ecosystems: technical debt, framework performance, and modular architecture. Peer reviewer for three software engineering journals. Technical judge at international hackathons.

Tech Stack

RubyRailsJavaScriptTypeScriptPostgreSQLRedisDockerKubernetesAWSDecidimGit
.plan
~/anna $ cat .plan
building    open source that institutions depend on
researching how software actually behaves in the wild
reviewing   code, papers, proposals
judging     hackathons, ideas worth shipping
avoiding    hype, lock-in, 3am deploys
~/anna $ _

What I Do

Code

Ruby on Rails engineer working on Decidim and other civic tech platforms. Core framework, community modules, production deployments for public institutions.

Ruby on RailsCivic TechOpen Source

Papers

Empirical research on Ruby on Rails ecosystems: technical debt, framework performance, modular architecture. Peer-reviewed publications.

ResearchMSREmpirical SE

Reviews

Peer reviewer for software engineering journals. Technical judge at international hackathons.

Peer ReviewJudgingCommunity

Research

Peer-reviewed work with interactive data companions

  • American Impact Review April 2026 Original research

    Self-admitted technical debt in modular open-source Ruby on Rails ecosystems

    A multi-project empirical study across Decidim, Discourse, Solidus, Spree, and Mastodon. Over half of all acknowledged technical debt in Rails turns out to live in rubocop:disable directives – a category absent from every SATD taxonomy published so far. The interactive companion lets you filter and read the 400 manually validated comments directly.

    Explore the companion Read the paper
View all research

Credentials

Professional affiliations, publications, and recognition

IEEE Senior Member

Senior Member of IEEE, the world's largest technical professional organization. Senior Member is the highest grade IEEE members can apply for.

Raptors.dev Fellow

Fellow of Raptors.dev – a community of Ruby developers focused on social good, innovation, and modern engineering practices.

Peer Reviewer

Reviewer for software engineering journals, contributing to the academic review process in the field.

Hackathon Judge

Let's collaborate

Open to research collaborations and invitations to judge hackathons.

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~/anna $ # matz is nice so we are nice _