Experience

I've been programming professionally for a bit:

• 
  National University of SingaporeUndergraduate Teaching AssistantJan 2018 - Present
  • Taught CS2103T Software Engineering (Spring 18)
  • Reviewed pull requests from students to encourage good software engineering practices.
  Takeaways:

  Teaching students helped me learn to explain my thoughts clearly. By reviewing pull requests from students, I learnt the importance of writing readable code, as people spend more time reading than writing code.

• 
  Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech)Data Engineer InternDec 2017 – Jan 2018
  • Implemented and released public APIs for Data.gov.sg portal using Node.js with AWS Lambda and DynamoDB.
  • Designed a unifying schema of several different formats for archival using DynamoDB.
  • Wrote serverless Node.js functions to scrape and verify JSON, then uploading to DynamoDB.
  • Minimized AWS Lambda costs by benchmarking, profiling and optimizing slow-running Node.js scripts.
  • Developed and deployed SMS-based medicine reminder solution targeted at middle-aged users.
  Takeaways:

  While building the public API, I learnt the importance of API response latencies and how we can cache some responses to reduce the latencies and cost of running the functions. This was also my first time using serverless functions, which taught me how stateless functions can reduce the complexity of our applications.

  Benchmarking and profiling the Node.js scripts taught me how the V8 JavaScript engine works in detail, such as how it manages memory and its garbage collection strategies.

• 
  Ethereum TechFreelance Web DeveloperOct 2017 – Dec 2017
  • Created the front-end of a cryptocurrency mining analytics dashboard with Vue.js.
  • Helped client visualize health of their miners and troubleshoot malfunctioning machines.
  • Suggested and implemented improvements to user experience from client's original design.
  Takeaways:
  

  This was my first commissioned project where we had to start from scratch and produce a high-quality maintainable code base. As the customer was not very sure what he wanted, we had to interpret his needs and suggest possible improvements. The constant feedback process helped us better understand the clients needs and resulted in a product with good user experience.

• 
  Ministry of Defence (Singapore)Personnel Systems AnalystDec 2014 – Aug 2016
  • Simulated and analysed personnel movement using complex system dynamics simulations.
  • Wrote VBA macros and SQL queries for Microsoft Access, Excel and Word.
  Takeaways:
  

  As we worked with a lot of badly formatted historical data, I learnt how to process data into readable forms. It was my first data analysis job, and I learnt a lot of simulation techniques as well as methods to verify our models. I also learnt how to properly present data for visualization, as I needed to explain what the model was doing and what we could learn from it.

• 
  Alpha Consulting Engineers Private LimitedSystem AdministratorMar 2014 – Jul 2014
  • Administered Windows servers and clients using IIS and Active Directory.
  • Redesigned homepage using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript.
  • Implemented features in the intranet page using jQuery, PHP and MariaDB/MySQL.
  • Decompiled and modified legacy JavaServer Pages application.
  Takeaways:
  

  This was my first programming related job. I learnt how to work with servers through SSH and RDP. While there, I also did some web development for the intranet and public websites of the company.

  I also worked with legacy code where the source files were lost. Since it was a JavaServer Pages application, I managed to decompile the class files to understand what was happening and used a hex editor to change some values.