To better serve Quizlet's teacher users and in-classroom use, I contributed to classroom games, assignment capabilities, and mobile-first features. This included working on a FastAPI Python endpoint utilizing the OpenAI API to generate Jeopardy-style game questions based on a user's study materials. I also developed Quizlet's first production Go service with a PlanetScale MySQL backing database to provide teachers with a dedicated flow for assigning specific content in specific study modes. Included in that work was leveraging a Krakend API Gateway for clients accessing these endpoints. Building off this experience, I developed a Go service with API endpoints for server-driven-UI to enable mobile-first development of a new home feed. This enabled faster iteration where the service could add features without requiring clients to update for users to receive the changes. To provide a way for users to leave feedback on ML-generated recommendations in the new feed, I implemented user feedback flows in a Valkey cache and MySQL database. Throughout these projects, I prioritized mentoring new hires and contractors as well as scoping and delegating tasks to ensure on time project delivery.

In this role I contributed to improving Quizlet's stability, security, and modernization efforts across different areas of the site. To improve Quizlet's internal search, I surfaced blended search results from different types of content through Hack PHP REST API integration displayed with React components. In order to improve availability of search results, I performed regular maintenance and upgrades of our Elasticsearch and Kibana clusters. Additionally, to enhance security of Quizlet's API endpoints I added input validation, caching, and appropriate response codes to legacy endpoints to prevent exploitation. During this time I also updated the Quizlet homepage to add Braze marketing placements and to use Next.js and React server-side rendering.

I worked on Quizlet's Explanations offering, including building React components for displaying textbook and exercise content. As Quizlet expanded the quantity of solutions provided, I added Spring API endpoints in Kotlin with Spanner persistence of user preferences to allow them to opt-in to notifications when new textbooks were added. To protect proprietary textbook solution content from scraping, I implemented a Memcached rate limiter.

I helped mentor over 600 students each semester through one-to-one office hour interactions, in-class help, and review sessions. At weekly team meetings, I advised course objectives, content, and assessments. I also maintained and led further development on the internal React application used for scheduling and synchronized hour allocations between Airtable and MySQL. In addition to leading a development team on our scheduling application, I worked as an individual contributor adding features to the software we used for office hours. In 2020, I built a website to coordinate career resources and exploration for team members and launched a biweekly speaker series featuring recent alumni talking to the team about their various careers in technology.

I worked with the Agora marketplace team at Quizlet to contribute to supporting premium content. Developing in different layers of the stack, I primarily used Hack/PHP for backend contributions and TypeScript, React, and Redux in the frontend. For UI changes, I used CSS and Stylus to model my contributions after designs created in Figma. I also gained experience with Quality Assurance, testing new features before release and evaluating event logging in BigQuery.