# Alexander Z.

> Software Generalist

Location: Millbrae, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/alexanderz

Twenty-five+ years of industry experience delivering quality software to meet customer needs.

Architected and brought several solutions from idea to production, was part of several founding teams.

Big picture thinker yet pragmatic, common-sense implementer.

Responsible, independent and love working with teams.

Proven problem solver and trouble-shooter.

Enjoy technical leadership and mentoring through sharing knowledge and intuition.

Champion best practices such as design and code reviews, upholding code quality, and striving for full test coverage.

Believe humility is key to getting things right: respect multiple views and multiple ways to achieve the goals.


Specialties: Java, C/C++, web technologies, services, distributed systems, TCP/IP networking.

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ Backblaze Cloud Storage & Backup
Jan 2019 – Present

### Senior Software Development Engineer @ Amazon
Jan 2009 – Jan 2019 | Palo Alto, CA
Co-started and built a high-throughput low-latency service that provides query understanding signals powered by state of the art ML technologies for a variety of use-cases including making search results on Amazon better.

Amazon Advertising: co-founded and led the implementation of the Amazon’s Advertising Exchange, the cornerstone of Amazon's programmatic advertising, scaled for billions of advertising requests per day.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Aleri
Jan 2009 – Jan 2009
Aleri acquired Coral8 in 2009.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Coral8 Inc
Jan 2004 – Jan 2009
As an early member of the engineering team, I participated in delivering Coral8 Engine, a Complex Event Processing (CEP) platform, a high-performance, highly scalable and fault-tolerant cluster for processing large volumes of real time data. 

I implemented the networking layer that handles both control and data, the protocol for guaranteed delivery of messages (US Patent 7818757), and the Coral8 SDKs for Java and C.

I led a team of three developers to build a Coral8 Portal, a web-based UI for the Coral8 Engine that allows users to manage continuous queries in Coral8 Engine and visualize their output.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Ditech Communications Corporation
Jan 1999 – Jan 2004
Lead the team developing the Element Management System for the family of Echo Cancellers.

### Software Engineer @ Center for Tribology
Jan 1998 – Jan 1999
Responsible for the system software for the TMS32C5x DSP-based motion controller boards.

### Software Engineer @ Fuga Corporation
Jan 1997 – Jan 1998
Wrote all the system and some of the application software for the Motorola 68328-based electronic organizer.

### Systems Engineer @ Siliconians, Inc
Jan 1996 – Jan 1997

### Research Assistant @ Caltech
Jan 1993 – Jan 1995

### Software Engineer, Intern @ Sequoia Peripherals, Inc
Jan 1991 – Jan 1995


## Education
### B.S. in Physics
California Institute of Technology


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/alexander-z-31577814

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Source: https://flows.cv/alexanderz
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/alexanderz/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-11