Dongsoo Cha

Full-Stack
Software Developer

01

About me

I'm a fullstack software engineer with experience primarily in React, Redux, Rails, and Node.js. My main project right now is a LeetCode flashcard system which uses spaced-repetition inspired by the ANKI algorithm to enable users to automatically be reminded of LeetCode problems that they struggled with. I am also developing a sorting visualizer which visualizes different basic sorting algorithms real-time and provides for side-by-side comparisons, helping new programmers understand the way code works. I am also planning and designing a golf game where the player plays the role of an errant golf ball, and where the objective is to avoid the hole at all costs.

Aside from programming, I am an avid golfer, professional violinist, and food enthusiast. To me, there is no Saturday more perfect than a day on the course, followed by some music and scotch! I also love learning about CAD to model floorplans and assist in home renovations.

I am obsessed with creating and sharing, no matter what the form. In life, I derive the most enjoyment out of sharing things that I have created, from music to new recipes, and more practically, new applications. While developing my projects, I found excitement learning new libraries and languages, and had a lot of fun tweaking the application for better user interaction. To me, user interaction and application functionality go hand in hand, as an application can only be truly functional when it is usable.

View my Resume

02

My
Experience

  • January 2022 - December 2022

    Fast Break Labs

    Software Engineer

    • Designed and implemented multiple product features in a Next.JS-based game application, including a web3 based user authentication flow that enabled one-click account creation using existing cryptocurrency wallets on Solana
    • Created internal tooling to interact with product content, allowing marketing and product teams to make changes without extra engineering support
    • Built dashboards in Metabase to track new feature impact on user retention/growth and support query requests from product and marketing teams
    • Collaborated closely with design via Figma to build an intuitive and accessible UI/UX, with a heavy focus on obvious reaction to any user interaction
    • Automated multiple repetitive processes, cutting down weekly product deploy time by approximately 3 hours

  • August 2021 - December 2021

    Stealth Mode Startup

    Software Engineer

    • Collaborate closely with team members to design and structure application’s database, utilizing MongoDB to test data types on a small scale and ensure scalability of data
    • Design and build testable RESTful APIs in Node and Express, utilizing Jest to test structure and consistency of data

  • May 2021 - Present

    App Academy

    Software Engineering Assistant

    • Mentor new students through the full App Academy Open curriculum (Ruby, Rails, Javascript, React, and SQL), answering questions in a time-sensitive manner and providing direction in complicated projects
    • Provide insights into testing and debugging, and help students understand errors and walk through step-by-step in order to ensure complete understanding of course material

03

My
Projects

Mango Music

  • Created custom playbar to replace HTML5 default audio player utilizing React refs, allowing for seeking/fast-forward/rewind functions and maintaining audio and play-state while navigating between pages
  • Hosted audio files on AWS, decluttering the application file tree and improving maintainability of database, and connected via Rails ActiveRecord attachments
  • Adopted CSS Grid for consistency of table styling and eliminating need to have conditional styling depending on dataset size

FlashCode

  • Managed backend design, evaluating advantages between embedding objects within User models as opposed to associating them, and testing inputs via Postman to ensure smooth connection to frontend team
  • Applied LeetCode API with Axios calls to populate cards in MongoDB, and wrote corresponding validations to auto-validate whether a user-input problem exists based on the response from LeetCode
  • Designed, built, and tested global message feed feature from backend to frontend, using React class components and refs to always scroll to newest message, and auto-generating messages on creation/update of cards in the Express routes

Visualize Sorts

  • Implemented d3.js library to generate bars on a HTML SVG element, enabling non-distorting visualizations of arrays, with bar height representing element value
  • Utilized Javascript async/await to allow for the SVG to rerender between iterations of sorting algorithms, and implemented sleep function to let user have control over sort speed

04

Contact Me

Phone Number

+1 (408) 714-8240

Email

dongsoo.tchah@gmail.com

Social Network