About me

In my role as a Full-Stack Developer at Abacus Life, I have had the opportunity to work in a dynamic and fast-paced startup environment, gaining comprehensive exposure to the full life cycle of software product development. My responsibilities span from initial planning and development to the completion and maintenance phases, ensuring a thorough and hands-on experience at each stage.

Key Contributions:

End-to-End Development: I have been an integral part of the entire software development process, starting from brainstorming and planning sessions to the actual coding, testing, deployment, and ongoing maintenance. This experience has provided me with a holistic understanding of how to build and sustain software products effectively.

Front-End Specialization: My primary focus has been on front-end development using React. I have designed and implemented several critical and complex components for our application, ensuring a seamless and user-friendly experience for our clients.

My work in this area includes:

Developing interactive and responsive user interfaces.

Implementing state management solutions for efficient data handling.

Collaborating with the design team to translate visual concepts into functional code.

Ensuring cross-browser compatibility and performance optimization.

CRM Software Restructuring: I played a pivotal role in restructuring the company’s CRM software and databases. This project aimed to enhance workflows and efficiencies across the entire organization.

I have utilized a variety of tools and technologies to achieve our project goals. These include:

Version Control: Proficient in using Git for version control, ensuring smooth collaboration and code management.

Design Collaboration: Using Figma for designing and prototyping UI components, facilitating clear communication between designers and developers.

API Testing: Employing Postman for API development, testing, and debugging to ensure robust and reliable backend services.

File Management: Utilizing FileZilla for secure and efficient file transfers and server management.

Additional Tools: Familiarity with various other tools and libraries that enhance development productivity and code quality.

Working at Abacus Life has honed my collaboration and communication skills. I regularly engage with cross-functional teams, including product managers, designers, and backend developers, to deliver cohesive and well-integrated solutions. My ability to articulate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders has been crucial in aligning project goals and expectations.

Committed to personal and professional growth, I stay updated with the latest industry trends and best practices. This proactive approach allows me to bring innovative ideas and improvements to our projects, contributing to the overall success of the company.

At Abacus Life, I have not only solidified my software development skills but also developed a keen understanding of the strategic and operational aspects of product development. This experience has prepared me to take on more challenging tasks and contribute effectively to the success of future projects.

Here are some of the technical skills that I gained through this experience:

Technical skills:

• React, Javascript, CSS experience
• UX/UI design & development
• RESTful APIs
• Restructuring large databases to improve efficiences

My role for CAE was being a part of their research & development team. I worked with a small team of computer science students and was tasked with conducting research on a cutting edge simulation technology called the Entity Component System. My role on the team was to test the maturity of this technology on the game engine platform Unity. I developed simulations using ECS technology and created complex behaviors for the entities such as movement and pathfinding. The scripts of the simulations were written in C#, which I had no prior experience with, but I was able to learn it as necessary in order to complete the project. By the end of the project, I developed a simulation that demonstrated how the new ECS technology could simulate over 1000x more entities with complex behaviors than the simulation technology that CAE was previously using. This research was presented to CAE and they were extremely satisfied with the results. Here are some of the technical skills that I gained through this experience:

Technical skills:

• Development using Unity
• C# experience
• Github for version control
• Agile development methods used by the team

In addition to all the technical knowledge that I gained, I also improved many of my soft skills. In our small development team, we each had some secondary roles. My role was the meeting scribe and I was additionally responsible for keeping meeting minutes for our weekly meetings with CAE, send out a weekly memo to update CAE on our accomplishments for the week and upcoming plans, and also write up other documentation that was required for our project. This greatly improved my writing skills and my ability to be attentive during meetings. Our team was also required to give several professional presentations throughout the course of this project where my public speaking and presentation skills were greatly improved. At the end of the project, my team was required to provide a final whitepaper detailing all the research and recommendations that we have collected. This whitepaper ended up being over 40 pages long with 5 separate volumes of content to which CAE was very happy about.
Here are a list of some of the soft skills that I improved through this experience:

Soft skills:

• Professional writing
• Keeping meeting minutes
• Public speaking
• Presentation skills
• Ability to work in a team

For more information on the work that I completed, I am able to provide a reference upon request of our team’s coach who oversaw all the work that I did.

I completed the Applied Data Science program from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a 12-week intensive curriculum covering various data science topics taught by MIT professors. Some of the courses from this program are: Foundations for Data Science, Data Analysis & Visualization, Machine Learning, Practical Data Science, Deep Learning, and Reccomendation systems. Throughout this program, I worked on many projects where I learned how to apply data science to real world problems. I completed a final capstone project on Facial Emotion Recognition through images where I built several models to determine which one was the best at classifying human emotions.

I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Florida, and in three years, I attained a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics. During my studies, I gained a wide variety of technical skills. I attained strong foundation in object oriented programming and became proficient in the languages Java and C++. I have also worked on multiple software projects and had lots of experience collaborating with other programmers. Most importantly, I developed the ability to quickly pick up new skills and technologies, and adapt to the requirements of a given project.

I have greatly developed my leadership skills through my experience in helping start a competitive college dance team from the ground up. I was manager of the team for the first year and took upon several initiatives such as handling logistics, opening a bank account, and managing team financials. I became captain of the team the second year and was responsible for conducting weekly practices for over 20 undergraduates, creating choreogrophy, and taking initiative on the team's various activites. As captain, I also helped lead the team into many firsts such as:

• Traveling nationally for competitions
• Delegate responsibilities by setting up an executive board
• Placing first at a competition in Oklahoma

I am no longer part of the team as I have graduated from college, but the team is now under new leadership and is continuing to grow to compete at higher level competitions. Overall, this experience has greatly developed my ability and skills to be a leader, and has given me real-world experience in leading a team to complete a shared goal.