Rust Saiargaliev
Curious engineer in Berlin, passionate about open source and maintainable code.
Your Django project deserves better than duct tape fixes and slow CI pipelines.
I help teams clean up, stabilize, and speed up their codebases — without derailing ongoing work.
What I Do
- Untangle legacy Django projects and bring them back to a maintainable state
- Hunt down performance bottlenecks — from 10 queries per page to 1000 hidden inside a serializer
- Modernize your stack: upgrade to the latest Python / Django, refresh outdated dependencies, and make your builds reproducible (uv / poetry / pipenv — whatever fits best)
- Improve CI, linting, and testing setups so code reviews focus on logic, not formatting
- Add observability and resilience: Sentry, prefetch/caching, async, and test coverage where it actually matters
Why Me
- Building with Django since 1.4 / Python 2.6
- Published my first PyPI package in 2015
- Worked with and advised dozens of Django teams — from startups to mature products
- Core maintainer of Model Bakery, a testing library used by teams worldwide
- Found and responsibly disclosed security flaws in a Django-based fintech app (out of pure curiosity)
- Based in Berlin, available across EU time zones
DM me on LinkedIn to discuss your project.