# David T.

> Software @ Skydio

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/davidt1

Product-oriented full stack software engineer (front-end emphasis) passionate about building products that tackle meaningful challenges. Biased for action, proactive communication, and collaboration with technical and non-technical stakeholders alike.

Lifelong learner - currently immersed in playing guitar in the style of “Django”, large format photography, and golf. Geeks out over beautiful engineering: cars, motorcycles, watches, cameras. Occasional rock climber, full-time dogfather to a rescue Formosan Mountain Dog named “Sudo”.

## Work Experience
### Staff Software Engineer - DFR @ Skydio
Jan 2024 – Present

### Senior Software Engineer @ Skydio
Jan 2023 – Jan 2024 | San Francisco Bay Area
Building next-generation interfaces and applications that enable Drone as First Responder (DFR) operations, enabling real-time situational awareness and Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) capabilities for agencies like NYPD, SFPD, LVMPD, and more!

### Lead Software Engineer @ Matternet Inc
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 | Mountain View, California, United States
• Pioneered a multi-screen application (Mission Control) designed to enable a single pilot to remotely command, control, and mitigate active flight risks for a fleet of drones; approved by FAA under first-ever UAS Type Certification
• Established real-time GraphQL architecture to consolidate data sources; enabled simplified developer experience and highly reliable cross-platform access and control of aircraft
• Conceptualized and transformed the raw onboard “detect and avoid” (DAA) data into intuitive custom real-time visualizations and projections to enhance overall safety and autonomous risk mitigation
• Implemented improved safety around controls of aircraft through secure handover and automated fallback
• Developed mobile-ready PWA to streamline and integrate steps required by ground operations to “turn around” an aircraft
• Achieved tracking of life-limited components alongside rendering complex hierarchical bill-of-materials (BOM) data through custom integration with Retool dashboard - realized in half of estimated time

### Staff Software Engineer @ Matternet Inc
Jan 2019 – Jan 2021
• Developed geospatial visualization framework to support real-time flight operations and historical analysis
• Overhauled UI pipeline by incorporating Storybook to decouple development environments; expanded user engagement and unified visual and integration testing strategies
• Supervised code quality; reviewing code with an eye for performance, maintainability, and scalability
• Routinely previewed, prototyped, and presented solutions across a broad set of domains (desktop, web, mobile, etc) for upcoming features within complex and dynamic constraints

### Senior Software Engineer @ Matternet Inc
Jan 2018 – Jan 2019 | Menlo Park, California, United States
• Redesigned legacy web architecture to simply testing scaling and enable iterative improvement
• End-to-end ownership of React Native iPad app; executed design through deployment to hospital labs
• Designed a shared component library and style guide to enable team to quickly build and maintain visual consistency, leading to time savings of 10+ hours a week
• Spearheaded implementation of TypeScript across the stack to increase team’s efficiency and confidence

### Front End Software Engineer @ Syapse
Jan 2016 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area
• Led refactor of legacy Backbone app to utilize React, Redux, and Immutable to improve maintainability
• Designed solutions to meet uniquely constrained computing environments - embedded dashboards for major electronic health records (EHR), dynamically pre-populated forms, content masking
• Distilled complex data into custom D3 visualizations powered by a Python / AWS Redshift pipeline to provide physicians rich insights to improve care of cancer patients and realize better treatment outcomes 
• Developed a “view as” feature, enabling admins to preview the app as another user - created Redux middleware to enable safe serialization of user/login data to be leveraged in LocalStorage
• Implemented client-side PDF generation to meet customers’ security requirements by transforming declarative Immutable document structures through a local Web Worker to improve performance and created a lightweight preview tool for legacy browsers


## Education
### Bachelor of Science - BS in Marketing & Entrepreneurship
Northeastern University

### Competitive Strategy in Game Theory, and International Relations
The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

### Chinese Business Language in Chinese Trade and Economics
Beijing Language and Culture University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/davidctsai
- GitHub: https://github.com/tsaidavid

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Source: https://flows.cv/davidt1
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/davidt1/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-31