Resume

Sirui Chen

Full-stack engineer who ships typed, production-grade systems.

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One-page resume, kept in sync with this page.

Summary

From an OS kernel and a distributed search engine to dashboards people actually operate — I build with strict TypeScript, real CI gates, and deploys that are boring on purpose. M.S.E. in Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania (May 2026); B.S. in Computer Science with a second major in Mathematical Science, Washington University in St. Louis.

Philadelphia, PA · Green Card · Open to relocation · Open to full-time roles

Approach

  • I prefer typed contracts end-to-end — data is converted into well-defined, validated structures at the edge and stays typed all the way through the system, instead of carrying raw blobs around.
  • I treat warnings as defects and edge cases as part of the spec. Defensive defaults, deterministic resource cleanup, and explicit error paths beat clever code that breaks under hostile input.
  • I ship small, reviewable units behind real CI gates. Lint, typecheck, and build must pass before anything reaches production, and deploys are boring on purpose.
  • I like working across the stack and across roles — UI craft, backend systems, infra, and talking to non-engineers about what we are actually trying to do.

Education

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA · Aug 2024May 2026

M.S.E. in Computer and Information Science

  • Coursework: Internet and Web Systems, Database and Information Systems, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Operating Systems

Washington University in St. Louis

St. Louis, MO · Aug 2020May 2024

B.S. in Computer Science; Second Major in Mathematical Science

  • CS GPA 3.98 / 4.00 · Overall GPA 3.84 / 4.00
  • Focus: full-stack development, systems, security, mobile apps, and OS labs

Experience

Research Assistant — Prof. Chris Callison-BurchUniversity of Pennsylvania

May 2025Aug 2025

  • Built and evaluated retrieval-augmented generation workflows for DARPA SciFy and OpenScholar using score-based filtering, contrastive model work, and domain data preparation.
  • Turned research goals into reusable scripts, datasets, and documentation so model and retriever changes could be tested consistently across the lab.

Python Developer InternCambioML

Dec 2023Mar 2024

  • Built an LLM-powered data portal with Danswer AI to search datasets from AWS, Datarade, and Snowflake across ingestion, indexing, and user-facing discovery workflows.
  • Wrote Python crawlers and cleaners for 5,000+ datasets; resolved metadata issues that affected search relevance and downstream data quality.
  • Automated AWS search infrastructure with CDK and deployment scripts for reproducible development, testing, and release support.

Lab Assistant — Vision-Assisted Self-Driving F1Tenth CarWashington University in St. Louis

Aug 2023May 2024

  • Improved model robustness in glare and shadow conditions through targeted data augmentation, experiment tracking, and evaluation.
  • Built a ROS accelerometer driver for sensor integration and applied self-attention distillation to improve convergence speed by 20%.

Data Processing InternGuwave Technology Co., Ltd.

May 2023Aug 2023

  • Designed Python ETL modules and a unified schema for 10+ semiconductor clients, supporting analytics and reporting workflows.
  • Reduced data processing time by 50% through modularization, stronger error handling, and reusable parsing logic.

Toolchain Development InternBlack Sesame Technology Co., Ltd.

Jun 2022Jul 2022

  • Built test automation for quantized neural networks on embedded systems, with MD5 checks, concurrent multi-device deployment, and structured client reports.

Projects

Loom — Project Management Dashboard

A complete project-management front end: full CRUD for plans, requirements and defects, reusable templates, a Gantt view and a dashboard of derived metrics, in about 1,900 lines of vanilla JavaScript with no build step, verified by an 80-plus-check Playwright suite. You can operate it live on this site.

JavaScript (no build)SVGCSS animationi18nPlaywrightAccessibility

SafeCommerce-LA

Authenticated dashboards, maps, charts, filters, and CSV export over a PostgreSQL schema that joins LA crime data with California retail sales records. Graded 99/100.

ReactPythonPostgreSQLJWTSQL OptimizationREST APIs

Distributed Web Search Engine

End-to-end distributed search platform with a custom crawler, indexer, PageRank, replicated key-value store, multithreaded web server, and an RDD-style compute layer named Flame.

JavaConcurrencyNetworkingDistributed SystemsCustom KVSRDD-style Compute

PennOS — A Unix-Like Educational OS

C implementation of Unix-like OS features: a shell with job control and I/O redirection, a SIGALRM-driven priority scheduler over spthread, full process lifecycle with signals and zombies, and the PennFAT on-disk filesystem — all wired up to a sandboxed live terminal on this site.

CPOSIX threads (spthread)Operating SystemsShellsSchedulingSignalsFilesystemsWebSocketsnode-ptyNext.jsxterm.jsprlimit / systemd sandboxing

MasterCard Onboarding Automation

Full-stack onboarding tool with structured questionnaires, input validation, standardized submissions, and backend APIs for client intake.

ReactREST APIsForm ValidationNode.js

Kinexus — WUSTL Medical Research Application

Fixed Apple Watch sync issues, refactored REST APIs, optimized AWS RDS queries, and wrote developer documentation that reduced onboarding time for new contributors.

REST APIsAWS RDSApple WatchSQLDocumentation

Skills

Languages

TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Java, C / C++, SQL, Shell

Frontend

React, Next.js (App Router), Tailwind CSS, Forms & validation, SVG / Canvas visualization, Accessibility

Backend & Data

Node.js, Express, REST APIs, WebSockets, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake, ETL pipelines, Query optimization

Cloud & Systems

AWS (EC2, RDS, CDK), Linux, Nginx, Docker, PM2 / systemd, Distributed systems, Concurrency, Operating systems, ROS

ML & NLP

PyTorch, Hugging Face, RAG, Retrieval, Contrastive learning

Practices

Strict typing, CI/CD gates, Playwright end-to-end tests, Documentation, Reproducible pipelines