# Kai Ye

> Software Engineer @ Notion

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

Full-stack software engineer with a frontend focus, and computer science researcher. 5 years of experience as a tech lead for an open-source project, working in information visualization, numerical optimization, and programming language design. Published research papers in top venues in computer graphics (SIGGRAPH), human-computer interaction (CHI, DIS), machine learning (Distill), and cryptography/security (CCS, USENIX Security).

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ Notion
Jan 2023 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States
Working on search (product and backend)! Previously: working on collaboration product features (Inbox, comments, observability)

### Software Engineer and Researcher @ Kai Ye Consulting
Jan 2022 – Jan 2023
Consulting on tech R&D, AI, and full-stack development:

* Currently building MVP full-stack app involving novel interface design for LLMs, in collaboration with Leiden University. (React, TypeScript, Express)
* Conducted research in urban resilience by interviewing community leaders and building agent-based simulations for an AI research nonprofit. (JavaScript, Vega-Lite)

### Full-Stack Software Engineer (Contract) @ Reduct.Video
Jan 2022 – Jan 2022 | New York, New York, United States
Designed and built new features spanning backend and frontend changes, e.g. a trash can feature for different kinds of user uploads, and a session-based undo/redo feature for user actions (React, TypeScript, and Python), which are deployed in production.

### Tech Lead and Graduate Researcher @ Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
Jan 2016 – Jan 2021 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Led a team of 5-10 students and advisors to design and build a mathematical diagramming platform from scratch. Built a domain-specific language compiler and typechecker, and novel numerical optimization algorithms for diagram layout, in React and TypeScript. Reviewed team's PRs. Resulting GitHub repository has 5k+ GitHub stars and work has appeared in top computer science venues including SIGGRAPH: https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/ Honored with a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship.

### Research Intern @ Microsoft
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Redmond, Washington, United States
Designed a novel tool for direct-manipulation editing of parametric designs (using JavaScript
and Svelte) and did a pilot user study to show the usability of my tool.

### Software Engineer Intern @ Brain @ Google
Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | San Francisco, California, United States
Worked at Google Brain’s Distill publication, on visualizing deep learning. Resulted in publication in Distill. (600+ cites)

### Software Engineer Intern @ Meta
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Menlo Park, California, United States
Visualized feature correlation on the Search team.

### Researcher @ MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)
Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Formal verification of DNS servers; resulted in published paper in top programming languages venue.


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/kai-ye-83946725a

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Source: https://flows.cv/kaiye
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/kaiye/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-22