# cd player

> tea drinker

Location: Staten Island, New York, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/cd

A typescript dev based in NYC.

When not coding, I am camping in the woods.

## Work Experience
### Full Stack Engineer @ Afficiency
Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | New York City Metropolitan Area
• Contributed to InsurTech platform (React, Typescript, Go, Python, Flask, MySQL) delivering life insurance products.
• Wrote microservices in Python & Golang to ship RESTFUL APIs and handle third-party integrations.
• Wrote raw sql queries, transform into human-readable format, and output most up-to-date data from the database.
• Sped up the dashboard page loadtime by combining client-sided pagination with backend SQL cursor-based queries; optimize the caching, sorting, and filtering widgets with React Query hooks.
• Leveraged Python Boto3 client in accessing AWS S3 buckets and retrieving PDF documents.
• Worked closely with the design team to translate wireframes and mockups into interactive web pages, maintaining a consistently high standard of visual design and user interface.

### Software Engineer @ August Schools
Jan 2022 – Jan 2023 | New York City Metropolitan Area
• Supported web development (React, Typescript, Ruby on Rails, MongoDB) of note taking services, driving quarterly revenue increases in 17.1% from public/private school clients.
• Conducted thorough debugging to ensure the platform was responsive and compatible across different devices.
• Implemented SSO with Microsoft and Google - note taking sessions are smartly logged on user calendars.
• Maintained GraphQL API endpoint, leveraged react-pdf library to allow users to customize PDF document generation.
• Leveraged Ruby gem Pundit to restrict certain views/actions to authorized users on Rails admin page.
• Parsed YAML config files to enable switching between different staging environments and synchronously connecting to respective PostgresQL DB instances hosted on AWS RDS.

### Teaching Assistant @ Research Foundation of The City University of New York
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | New York, United States
• Monitored 30+ students’ growth in algorithmic problem solving skills in evening class
• Distributed weekend homework to assess students’ learning outcomes
• Provided constructive feedback on students’ live coding and communication skills

### Software Engineer @ Alice Financial
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Brooklyn, New York, United States
• Leveraged financial technology (React, Typescript, Ruby on Rails, Postgres) in saving American workers a yearly estimate of $3.5 million on pretax spending.
• Contributed to GraphQL API logic in determining user eligibility for FSA/HSA spending.
• Contributed to admin UI page powered by Rails to allow protected CRUD actions for payroll and customer support.
• Absorbed domain knowledge by maintaining notion docs and pair programming with senior engineers.
• Covered spending eligibility edge cases by writing meaningful tests - grace period, terminated employee, etc.

### Lead Instructor @ Research Foundation of The City University of New York
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021
• Led a technical evening program at Brooklyn College focused on interview prepping
• Introduced students to whiteboarding & pair programming on Leetcode and Hackerrank
• Designed a course covering common key concepts in algorithm problems: stack, tree, linked list, graph

### Associate Software Engineer @ Scholarship Junkies
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021
• Used Git to manage and track code changes, ensuring efficient collaboration and codebase integrity (HTML, CSS, JS).
• Maintained scholarshipjunkies.org - from landing pages to form submission templates.
• Understood the product and brand in order to tell a compelling story through web implementation.
• Fixed business logo misalignment, image resizing in email template; fixed email subscription bug.


## Education
### Master of Science - MS in Computing Systems
Georgia Institute of Technology
Jan 2022 – Jan 2025

### Bachelor of Business Administration - BBA in Marketing/Marketing Management, General
Baruch College
Jan 2014 – Jan 2019


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/chao-lai-2900
- GitHub: https://github.com/chaotic-justice/

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Source: https://flows.cv/cd
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/cd/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-20