Jeff Kao

Work Experience

Inkling - Platform Engineer (Intern)
Aug. '12 - Dec '12
San Francisco, CA (http://inkling.com)
Worked on scaling out Inkling's digital publishing platform.
  • Worked on software bottlenecks on backend-services for performance improvements of over a magnitude
  • Re-built project management tool from ground-up to support 10x scale via large-scale code refactoring, caching, messaging and sharding schemes
[Python, Tornado, Ruby, Rails, Redmine, Redis, Memcached, RabbitMQ, PostgreSQL]
PagerDuty - Software Engineer (Intern)
Jan. '12 - Apr. '12
San Francisco, CA (http://pagerduty.com)
Shipped code for IT on-call alerting platform at Y-Combinator startup.
  • Re-built payment services to avoid expensive PCI-Compliance requirements
  • Automated time-consuming administrative tasks
  • Took on large refactoring tasks to increase maintainability and testability
  • Won Hackday Award for developing internationalization support capabilities
[Ruby, Rails, CoffeeScript, jQuery, Backbone.js, HAML, SASS, MySQL]
Infusion - Software Consultant (Intern)
May. '11 - Sept. '11
New York, NY (http://infusion.com)
Worked with clients to deliver high-quality software solutions.
  • Built a million-dollar funding platform for New York Department of Education:
    • Project received internal award for "Best Application of the Year"
  • Built a Browser Helper Object for AMD for video tools
[C#, C++, ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript, jQuery]
Sybase (SAP) - Software Developer (Intern)
Aug. '10 - Dec. '10
Waterloo, ON (http://sybase.com)
Built infrastructure tools for Sybase IQ product and team.
  • Built an automated installer test framework as a side-project
[Java, bash, perl]
RamSoft - QA Tech (Intern)
Jan. '10 - Apr. '10
Toronto, ON (http://ramsoft.com)
Worked with developers to test medical-imaging software.
[SQL, batch]
Atomic Energy of Canada - Research Student
Jun. '07 - Aug. '07
Deep River, ON (http://aecl.ca)
Performed Research on an Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet
  • Researched various cost-effective methods of decomposing Zirconium compounds to create Zirconium Tert-Butoxide used to coat reactor walls
  • Presented findings to AECL staff at the end of term

Technical Skills

  • Ruby
  • Java
  • SQL
  • Scala
  • Python
  • C#
  • C
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Tornado
  • Play
  • ASP.NET MVC
  • jQuery
  • Backbone.js
  • JavaScript
  • CoffeeScript
  • HTML5
  • CSS3
  • git, hg, svn
  • bash, zsh
  • vim
  • MySQL
  • PostgreSQL
  • MongoDB
  • memcached
  • redis
  • RabbitMQ
  • Heroku
  • Amazon AWS

Projects

OMGiWant - Gift Recommendation
  • In the works.
[Scala, Play, MongoDB, Amazon Web Services]
Mediac - Dynamic Content Platform
  • Keep track of dynamic content like webcomics/videos/blogs
[Rails, Bootstrap, CoffeeScript, Heroku, PostgreSQL]
Photograff - Facebook Canvas App
  • Graffiti on Facebook Photos
[HTML5 Canvas, jQuery, PHP, Facebook API]
More on GitHub: http://github.com/jkao

Notable Info

  • Aspiring entrepreneur, with interests in internationalization
  • Technical interests in large-scale web-application architecture and distributed systems
  • Able to communicate in Chinese (Cantonese & Mandarin), Japanese

Education

University of Waterloo

Computer Engineering
  • Expected graduation in 2014
  • Member of Muay Thai Club, Music Club, Poker Club