My name is Nicu and I am a software engineer based in San Francisco Bay Area. I am currently researching and building small LLMs (<1B parameters) for local (non-cloud) computing. If you are a graduate student looking to collaborate let’s chat!

Experience

2024 — NowCapital OneSenior Software Engineer

2024 — Now

San Francisco, California, United States

Shared components and frontend core services engineering

Refactored core frontend services responsible for prerendering html and static api generation during build-time allowing Bank LoB to pull content data within a separate platform during run-time while keeping content in sync

Developed proof-of-concept for allowing public shared components to be re-usable within a separate, authenticated platform resulting in additional retargeting opportunities for our marketing team

Trained and mentored other engineers on Angular's best practices and shipped enhancements to code generators to help onboard new engineers quicker

2021 — 2024Capital OneSoftware Engineer

2021 — 2024

San Francisco Bay Area

Published shared libraries and components to reduce overall time to deploy new marketing and product landing pages.

Reduced vendor lock-in by refactoring web platform services while prioritizing resiliency during migration

Optimized marketing page load-time and SEO performance using static page pre-rendering and

webpack module federation

Facilitated technical discussions across software engineering teams responsible for shipping

code across multiple lines of businesses to socialize best-practices, solve production issues, and uncover new product opportunities.

Technologies: Nx, Angular, NPM, Artifactory, Webpack

Team: Platform

2021 — 2021GrailedSoftware Engineer

2021 — 2021

Developed features which improve trust and safety for buyers and sellers.

Decreased PayPal fraud case rate through improving usability and form validation

for buyers and sellers.

Increased platform security by implementing custom react hooks and OAuth to prevent

unauthorized API client access.

Improved developer productivity by leveraging git hooks and custom ESLint rules.

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, React, Redux, Algolia, Git

Team: Trust

2019 — 2020IDEOSoftware Engineer

2019 — 2020

San Francisco Bay Area

Collaborated alongside IDEO's cross-functional products team to help organizations build more innovative teams and cultures.

Owned and built core features for flagship product, Shape, an open-innovation software used by thousands of organizations including Mitsui, IKEA, and IDEO

Implemented scalable code while resolving performance bottlenecks for the entire application stack

Increased landing page conversions while reducing in-app churn using Google Tag Manager

Generated insights that inform the product roadmap using Redash and Google Analytics

Leveraged code-sharing platforms such as Bit, NPM, and RubyGems to share logic between codebases

Technologies: Ruby on Rails, React, MobX, Heroku, Firestore, Tag Manager, Google Analytics

Team: Products

2016 — 2019Major League BaseballAssociate Software Engineer

2016 — 2019

San Francisco Bay Area

Streamlined MLB Statcast data API operations by developing internal and public-facing endpoints and tooling.

Developed API endpoints which served new player and scouting prospect data for MLB.com using AWS Elasticache and Spring Boot microservices.

Improved cloud deployments and service uptime by migrating API services and tooling from internal datacenter to AWS.

Improved data entry operations by improving internal database editor tool.

Mitigated security risks by migrating authentication tools and internal APIs using

OAuth2, Okta, SSL, and 2FA.

Technologies: Java, Javascript, React, MobX, Spring, SQL, AWS, LDAP, OAuth, Okta

Team: Data

Education

2011 — 2016

San Francisco State University

Bachelor of Science (BS)

2011 — 2016