# Karen L.

> Software Engineer | Educator | Speaker

Location: New York, New York, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/karenl

I invest in brains.

I believe that the human brain is our greatest asset, and developing it is a non-negotiable, both for individual growth and societal advancement.

As a classical pianist turned elementary school teacher turned software engineer, my mission is to contribute to projects that allow people to reach their full potential. Here are some of the projects I'm interested in partaking

🔹 Develop tools and platforms that enable people to collaborate, and develop products/services
🔹 Bring my insights into education to ensure our curriculums prepare students for the future
🔹 Foster a collaborative tech community to make tech more accessible to all individuals

On the technical side, I'm an experienced full-stack engineer. My primary language is JavaScript. In addition, I have experience in cloud infrastructure development.

I'm also an educator and speaker who is eager to do talks and workshops about collaboration and communication.

Let's connect if you're intrigued by the intersection of education and technology. Together, we can explore how to make impactful changes in both fields.

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer III @ GitHub
Jan 2023 – Present | United States
All things npm registry 
• Support 300B downloads each month
• Maintain a registry with 3.7M+ packages

### Software Engineer II @ BookNook
Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | United States
• Implemented internal features for engineers and product managers to optimize the deployment process (React JS)  
• Collaborated with other engineers to fix and fulfill data-related bugs and needs of customers (Node JS, Postgres, SQL)
• Oversaw the implementation of 3rd party feature flagging tool and create customized abstractions in ReactJS and NodeJS to enable feature flagging within BookNook's App and API
• Organized feature flagging onboarding meetings and author documentation for PMs and engineers  
• Improved app security from "F" to "A" by applying missing security headers as identified by the SOC audit

### Lead Software Engineer @ Talent Hatched
Jan 2021 – Jan 2022
Talent Hatched Inc. is a participant in the Geekdom Incubator Program.  The company is building a recruitment platform for student internships and apprenticeships. As the only engineer in the company, I am responsible for the following items:
• Make all tech-related decisions for the company
• Design database schema and build databases (Node JS & PostgresQL)
• Create portals for all user types based on the design provided by the designer (React JS)
• Write test for the code and conduct testing

*This is a side project

### Software Engineer I @ Turnitin
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Dallas, Texas, United States
(Initially hired by ExamSoft, which was acquired by Turnitin in 2021)
•Developed, maintained and updated question types for the assessment platform 
•Collaborated with a team of 10+ to develop, maintain, and update assessment creation and analysis tools
•Worked with back-end engineer on data transfer between browser-side and server-side 
•Created accessible UI components for the design system based on UX designer's wireframes 
•Coordinated with QA team in unit testing and system testing

### Team Lead @ Lambda School
Jan 2020 – Jan 2020
•  Provided daily feedback and issue resolution of Computer Science curriculum through slack help channel and code review
•  Led a team of 8 students that emulates a real work environment using Agile methodology

### San Antonio Meetup Coordinator @ Lambda School
Jan 2019 – Jan 2020
• Organized Lambda School Hackathon for Lambda students in San Antonio
• Facilitated monthly meetup for Lambda students 
• Built and fostered the Lambda community locally in San Antonio

### Corps Member @ Teach For America
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | San Antonio, Texas
• Selected as one of approximately 3500 accepted candidates out of over 40000 applicants to teach in an urban or rural school district across the nation
• Attended monthly training on culturally responsive teaching
• Active AmeriCorp Member
• AANHPI (Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders) Affinity Group Member and Facilitator

### 5th Grade IB PYP Teacher @ San Antonio ISD
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | San Antonio, Texas Area
• Taught 5th grade ELAR, Math, Science and Social Studies 
• Prepared and executed lesson plans that follow IB PYP Framework and TEKS Curriculum
• Designed and managed project learning for entire 5th grade (over 80 students)
• STAAR 2018 Results: 90% of students Met or Exceeded Growth, 94% of students passed Math, 84% of students passed Reading.


## Education
### Full-stack Web Development
BloomTech

### Bachelor of Arts & Bachelor of Music in Linguistics and Piano Performance
Oakland University

### Summer Course in Spanish Grammar and Conversation
Universidad Nacional de Rosario


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/karenjli

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Source: https://flows.cv/karenl
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/karenl/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-23