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Résumé

(As of September 2011.)

Objective

To put to good use my skills in systems programming and programming language theory & implementation; to learn and improve my abilities; to work on a project involving new ideas with potential real-world impact.

Education

• BS in Computer Science
  Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
  2008-2012
  Current QPA: 3.74 (out of 4)

Work experience

• RethinkDB, Summer 2011
  Software Engineering Intern

  • Finished solo project improving buffer cache performance.
  • Wrote and debugged high-performance, high-concurrency C++ code.

• Carnegie Mellon University, Spring & Fall 2011
  Teaching Assistant for 15-150 "Functional Programming"

  • TA during the course's first-ever semester.
  • Implemented course infrastructure, including autograder and parallel sequence library.

• Google, Summer 2010
  Software Engineer in Test Intern

Tool skills

• Fluent in C, C++, Python, Java, Haskell, Scheme, SML; capable with x86(-64) assembly, OCaml, Common Lisp, and Clojure; passing familiar with many other languages, and eager to learn more.

• Experienced with the Unix environment and its tools (bash, make, sed, man, etc).

• Experienced with the version control systems git, mercurial, subversion, and darcs.

Relevant course work

• 15-410: Operating System Design & Implementation (A)

  Designed & implemented various system-level projects, most notably a threading library and a multitasking, preemptible kernel.

• 15-411: Compiler Design & Implementation (B)

  Worked with a partner to design & implement a compiler, written in Haskell, for a safe C-like language, targeting both x86-64 assembly and LLVM.

• 15-354: Computational Discrete Mathematics (A)

  Discrete mathematics and its applications, abstract and concrete; the practical use of computers in investigating and solving discrete math problems.

• 15-417: Higher-order Typed Compilers (ongoing)

  Will write a multi-stage type-directed compiler and runtime for a high-level strongly-typed functional source language (subset of SML), targeting C.

Knowledge & expertise

This is essentially bragging, so take it as you wish, but it does tell you what I think I'm qualified for.

• Systems programming, down to the operating system implementation level. I am used to checking & propagating error conditions, validating untrusted data, avoiding memory leaks, minimizing memory allocation, optimizing for spatial locality. Debugging is to be embraced, not feared. assert() is my friend.

• Concurrency: I can deal with nondeterministic concurrency without going insane. I know how to avoid race conditions, and I can debug them when I'm wrong. I can not only use but implement: message-passing (synchronous or asynchronous), futures, fork/join, and plain old mutexes & condition variables.

• Language implementation: parsing, compilation, garbage collection, type checking & inference. I know a little about optimization, and am eager to learn more. I haven't implemented a JIT yet, but it's on my to-do list.

• Common sense: Algorithmic improvements beat hand-optimization. Code should be as simple as possible but no simpler. Document your assumptions and check them. Don't commit untested code. Factor out repeated patterns. Insert platitude here.

• Learning. I work hardest on the things that interest me, and learning new things interests me immensely. Hence, I learn fast.

• I'm not a "code cowboy". I document my code and I play well with others.

• As you may have noticed, I'm not particularly modest. This may be a good or a bad thing.