Yihan Zhu
Software Engineer
whoami
Hey, I'm Yihan—a software engineer who's into tech, sports, and building cool things. I like exploring new gadgets, coding projects, and ways to make tech more useful in daily life.
When I'm not working on software, I'm probably snowboarding 🏂, playing basketball 🏀, working out 💪🏼, or trying out new tech gear 🎮. I enjoy figuring out how things work and sharing what I learn along the way.
Always up for interesting projects and new ideas—feel free to connect!🩵
skills
Programming Languages & Frameworks
Data Processing & Cloud Services
DevOps & Tools
experience
Software Engineer @ SnowOverflow
Aug. 2024 - PresentDesigned and developed SnowOverflow, a social media app for the snowboarding and skiing community, providing features such as trip planning, buddy matching, carpooling, real-time chat, weather forecast, and resort information.
Built and deployed backend microservices supporting real-time data pipelines using Flutter, Dart and Firebase to synchronize resort, chat, and weather data across 3000+ ski resorts worldwide, ensuring low-latency updates.
Scaled the platform from 500+ beta testers to 2,000+ active users in 2 months, with 400+ trips posted and 95% positive feedback, validating the platform's potential to serve a highly engaged community.
Delivered the MVP with a team of 4, utilizing Xcode Cloud CI/CD pipelines to maintain 99.9% uptime, streamline deployment, and reduce app build times from 1 hour to 10 minutes, enabling faster iteration cycles.
Software Engineer @ Zafin
Aug. 2023 - Jun. 2024Contributed to the Zafin IO team, facilitating the integration and orchestration of Zafin's industry-leading SaaS solutions for core banking modernization and transformation, utilized by global financial institutions such as Wells Fargo, HSBC, ING, CIBC, and US Bank.
Built a scalable Kubernetes and Docker-based distributed microservices environment with Terraform for infrastructure as code and Jenkins for automation, reducing cloud costs by $400K annually.
Designed a CLI tool with Go and Cobra to streamline the daily use of the microservice environment, reducing setup time from 3 hours to 5 minutes and improving productivity for 100+ engineers across teams.
Led a team of 3 engineers to develop and maintain streaming ETL pipelines using NiFi, Flink, and Redpanda, ensuring 99.999% data accuracy over 1TB of weekly data, contributing to the company's acquisition.
Software Engineer @ Qualcomm
May 2020 - Aug. 2021Optimized graphics drivers for Snapdragon chips using C and C++, enabling smooth multimedia playback and advanced rendering capabilities for automotive manufacturers, reducing system latency by 10%.
Enhanced rendering pipelines using OpenGL and DirectX, optimizing shaders and reducing frame processing times from 20ms to 17ms, resulting in improved responsiveness and visual quality in automotive infotainment systems.
Delivered production-ready driver features, utilizing GDB for debugging and Perf for performance profiling, reducing feature deployment timelines by 1 week while ensuring system stability across hardware configurations.
Research Assistant @ University of Toronto
May 2019 - Aug. 2019Conducted research on Ontology, integrating AllegroGraph with Apache Jena using Python, reducing citywide transportation data processing time from 1–2 hours to under 30 minutes while ensuring consistent formatting.
Software Engineer @ ArcSoft
May 2018 - Aug. 2018Processed and refined 500k+ historical image samples into 200k+ high-quality datasets using Python and automated workflows, reducing labeling efforts from a multi-person, weeks-long process to a one-person, two-week process, while boosting gesture recognition accuracy from 75% to 90%.
education
Master of Engineering @ University of Toronto
Sep. 2022 - Jan. 2024Electrical & Computer Engineering
Emphases: Data Analytics & Machine Learning, Computer Engineering
Bachelor of Applied Science @ University of Toronto
Sep. 2017 - Apr. 2022Electrical & Computer Engineering
Minors: Robotics & Mechatronics, Artificial Intelligence Engineering