Nov 2018 - Jul 2022

KidsLoop V1

Period: Nov 2018 - Sep 2019
Platform: Android & iOS
Role: Unity Engineer
Engineers: 2 backend, 2 frontend
Description: a UI application for parents and teachers, developed from scratch

Notable Contributions:

  • authentication and authorization
  • virtual list views
  • offline mode and syncing when back online
  • asynchronous file loading and API calls + loading indicators

Badanamu Apps

Period: Sep 2019 - Jan 2020
Platform: Android & iOS
Role: Unity Engineer
Description: a suite of child learning applications that have been published on Google Play and Apple Store for many years

Notable Contributions:

  • in-app purchasing
  • update Unity versions
  • integrate analytics
  • bug fixing

ESL Dashboard

Period: Jan 2020 - Jul 2020
Platform: Android & iOS
Role: Unity Engineer
Description: a library for use in the Badanamu ESL learning application. It’s a dashboard that presents all kinds of learning statistics in categories such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking. I worked on this project with two other Unity developers and a couple backend developers.

Notable Contributions:

  • native Android and iOS media plugins for taking pictures, choosing from a gallery, and image resizing/compression.
  • speech recognition library utilizing Amazon Transcribe. I developed both the frontend and backend using .NET, and deployed it to AWS as a Docker container.
  • asynchronous file loading and API calls + loading indicators
  • incremental thumbnail loading

KidsLoop V2

Period: Jul 2020 - Jul 2022
Platform: Web
Role: Backend Engineer (NodeJS/TypeScript)
Description: an online learning platform for parents, teachers, and students

Notable Contributions: implement and manage the following repositories

  • H5P Service: built on top of H5P-Nodejs-library; utilized Redis, MongoDB, express db, React, etc.
  • Media Storage Service: stores audio, video, images, etc. recevied from H5P activities
  • Media Storage React Hooks: a library used by certain client-side H5P activities to upload media such as audio recordings and screenshots
  • xAPI Service: stores xAPI events received from H5P activities
  • xAPI Uploader: a library used by client-side H5P activities for uploading user interaction events to the xAPI Service
  • Assessment Service: stores class results for students which is queried and presented in a frontend dashboard; reads from the xAPI service and Media Storage Service

I worked with many different technologies while developing these services such as Postgres, GraphQL, Redis, AWS (S3, Lambda, ECS, DynamoDB, RDS, IAM), Terraform, Postgres, and Docker. I was originally hired as a Unity Engineer, but when company priorities changed, they asked if I’d be interested in switching over to backend engineering. I’m always up for learning new things and expanding my software engineering skillset, so I accepted. My excitement for the opportunity also took over my personal/hobby development time, which was normally dedicated to Unity and C#. I had never really done any backend engineering or NodeJS/TypeScript development, so I went all-in on studying and practicing. I still prefer game development, but this was an enjoyable and enlightening experience.

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