James Chun

Email : james.chun@gmail.com | Phone : 412-425-2207

Experience

Knewton

New York, NY

Software Engineer, Full Stack

Sept 2015 - Present
Quizzes: Responsible for technical design and scoping of new user flow for quizzes and grades. Led development of
feature, and built integration with Learning Management Systems.
Sharing & Distribution: Developed token sharing mechanism to allow easier onboarding for courses. Researched
and designed technical plan, for product distribution plan in bookstores
Permissions: Drove cross team effort to build consensus on our permissioning use cases. Designed and developed
permissioning system for teachers and learners in our product.
Analytics: Researched and built analytics to help teachers predict how long a student might take on an
assignment. Developed analytics pipeline and front end designs.
Software Engineer, Platform
Jan 2013 - Sept 2015
API & Edge Services: Led efforts to improve reliability and visibility into Knewtons API. Built smarter edge
service for rate limiting, authentication and tracing. Built and released Knewtons open source API SDK.
Adaptive Learning Showcase: Led development of a webapp to showcase adaptive learning to partners. This
helped customers understand our technology, and has proven to be invaluable for business development.
Scaling & Microservices: Broke up platform into microservices for better scaling and reliability. Created
standardized service templates, migrated data stores using MapReduce. Planned and executed deployment.
Performance Enhancements: Halved request latencies to meet SLAs. Tuned caching, GC parameters and
connection pools. Augmented Kafka rebalancing algorithm for better cache affinity.
Learner Profiles: Led design and development for Knewtons new Learner Profiles. This was a cross team
collaborative effort that allowed a learners history to translate across different subject domains.
Platform Product Launch: Built core backend services for learner management and recommendations for
Knewtons new platform. Designed and developed load testing framework with playback capability.

LinkedIn

Mountain View, CA

Sofware Engineer, Mobile

Mobile App: Redesigned and built new features for iOS and Android apps.

BlackRock
Sofware Engineer

Summer 2012

New York, NY
Summer 2011

Data Pipeline: Rewrote jobs and improved processing of exposure and liquidity in portfolios by 50%.

Carnegie Mellon University

Pittsburgh, PA

Research and Teaching Assistant

Jan 2011 - May 2012
Research Assistant - Robotics Institute NavGroup: Assisted researchers in running and analyzing
autonomous driving simulations, to improve collision detection algorithms.
Teaching Assistant - Basic Programming in C and Unix: Tutored students, assisted in grading.

Education

Carnegie Mellon University

Bachelor of Science, Double Major in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Economics. GPA: 3.5

Pittsburgh, PA
2009 2012

Projects
Personalized Electronic Health Record: Built a mobile app for electronic health records, to improve patient

onboarding and EHR accuracy. With a team of doctors and engineers, iterated on market feedback, and ran a pilot
program with 9 neurological clinics in Jersey City, NJ. Pitched product to private healthcare systems in NYC.
Semantic Graph Merging: Merge knowledge graphs from different domains, using content semantic similarities.
Printed Adaptive Learning: Built a mobile app to enable adaptive learning without direct internet access. The
mobile app scans assignment sheets to provide augmented content, recommendations and grading. Prototype was
demoed at an educational conference and resulted in a signed partnership.
Ethereum Oracle: Prototyped an oracle for use in pricing models.
Personal Cloud Encryption Toolchain: CLI to encrypt, store and retrieve personal blobs in the cloud.