# Richard Cao

> Software Engineer II at Stripe

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

Hey there, I’m Richard! A software engineer and growth hacker dedicated to building user-focused products and driving user acquisition.

I help mentor students, particularly at the University of Waterloo! Please message me if you're interested in improving your resume, interview prep, networking, 1st year internship opportunities, work-life balance or career progression. Also always happy to chat about life!

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer II @ Stripe
Jan 2023 – Present | New York, New York, United States

### Software Engineer @ Stripe
Jan 2021 – Jan 2023
Worked on Stripe Connect. Engineering DRI for crypto payouts on Express and Cross Border Payouts.

### Software Engineering Intern @ Stripe
Jan 2021 – Jan 2021

### Software Engineering Intern @ Instagram
Jan 2020 – Jan 2020
– Spearheaded the development of co-authoring as a self-initiated project during the internship, ultimately presenting to the executive team including the Head of Instagram (CEO), VP Engineering, VP Product, and VP Design
– Planned, coded, and executed patches removing critical security vulnerabilities affecting millions of user’s contact points [Python]
– Redesigned and reimplemented authentication endpoints to reduce account login friction and improve user activation [Python]

### Software Engineering Intern @ Facebook
Jan 2020 – Jan 2020

### Software Engineering Intern @ Postmates by Uber
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco Bay Area
– Designed and implemented end-to-end authentication for merchants on the main customer support site [React, Python, Django, MongoDB, Golang]
– Proposed and architected a patent-pending proactive order risk detection system to boost customer experience [Python, Django]
– Resolved a P0 infrastructure bug blocking website access from ~10% of daily users [NodeJS, Nginx, Kubernetes]
– Optimized the logging configuration of the web client to filter out irrelevant errors, ultimately decreasing noise by 21% [Sentry, React]

### Software Developer Intern @ Wish
Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | San Francisco Bay Area
– Developed a Python backend service to support iOS rich push notifications, resulting in a 20% increase in iOS Daily Active Users (DAU) and a 300% increase in click-through rate (CTR)
– Designed experiments and conducted cohort data analysis to optimize impact for the iOS rich push notification project [Python, Hive, SQL]
– Built the Python API and React webpage for a new product feed on Wish’s main website [Python, React, Redux, Flow]
– Created scripts to distribute campaigns to 140+ million users [Python]
– Spearheaded monthly Tech Talks event to improve knowledge sharing among teams

### Software Engineering Intern @ PagerDuty
Jan 2018 – Jan 2018 | Toronto, Canada Area
– Architected API and supporting microservice of new billing system for  custom pricing packages [Elixir, Phoenix, Ruby on Rails]
– Created Twitter Alert System that tracks keyword trends in real-time, featured on company blog post [Python, Datadogpy, PD API]
– Improved trial-conversion rates and customer experience by revamping outdated web application pages [Ember.js, Ruby on Rails, Haml]
– Handled team’s technical responsibilities by joining oncall rotation
– Connected PD customers to the engineering team through a lightning talk presentation

### Software Developer Intern @ NCR Corporation
Jan 2017 – Jan 2017 | Waterloo, Canada
– Built RESTful API and web application that queries and displays
customer transaction history [Java, Jersey, SQL, Elasticsearch, Angular.js, CSS/LESS]
– Reduced memory usage of Docker images on Docker Registry by designing and implementing an automated garbage collector [Java, Bash, Kubernetes, YAML, Elasticsearch, Jenkins]
– Continuously maintained microservices hosted with Docker and 
Kubernetes [Bash, YAML]
– Automated unit and integration tests to full deployment
[Cucumber/Gherkins, JUnit, Jenkins]

### Intern Analyst @ ESTI Consulting Services
Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | Saskatoon
– Built new company website with modern web design concepts to improve UX and UI [Drupal, PHP, HTML/CSS, JavaScript]
– Modernized legacy software used by ESTI’s top three clients [Visual Basic to C#]
– Coded program to parse and display data from enterprise routers for a proof-of-concept [Python, Unix, HTML/CSS]

### Soccer Referee @ Saskatoon & District Soccer Referees Association Inc.
Jan 2012 – Jan 2016 | Saskatoon
Enforced the rules of the game with utmost professionalism


## Education
### Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering
University of Waterloo
Jan 2016 – Jan 2021

### High School
Walter Murray Collegiate Institute
Jan 2012 – Jan 2016


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/richardcao98

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