Tom Wang

About

Built and operated an end-to-end customer-facing "Record Platform" web product as both engineer and primary user, focusing on reliability and correctness in core flows like search and checkout. Implemented a TypeScript/React frontend with a multi-service backend and Kafka-based event-driven architecture, and created internal tooling to automate risky ops like Kubernetes TLS certificate rotation with k6 load/chaos testing (including HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 validation).

Key Strengths

• End-to-end product ownership (problem definition through backend/infra/UX)
• Rapid iteration with short ship-test-harden cycles using real/load tests
• Reliability-first prioritization of critical user flows (search/checkout/auth)
• Strong system design with clear frontend/backend boundaries and typed contracts
• Microservices at scale: designing for partial failure, backpressure, and eventual consistency
• Operational excellence via internal tooling (automated TLS cert rotation + protocol validation)
• Observability-driven debugging and root cause analysis in distributed systems
• Performance and scalability tuning (DB bottlenecks, connection pools, timeouts/retries)
• Designed FastAPI backend with security headers, CORS, and SlowAPI rate limiting (custom key function + per-route limits)
• Built Dockerized system with clear separation between AI logic and infrastructure for debuggability
• Deployed Kubernetes for ~11 microservices with HPA (70% CPU target, 30 replicas)
• Owned CI/CD with GitHub Actions; identified and addressed build-time bloat via Dockerfile optimization
• Led monolith-to-microservices migration driven by k6 performance testing; progressed to Kubernetes for scalability
• Implemented Kafka-based streaming; understands partitioning, consumer groups, and operational constraints (Kafka/Zookeeper placement)

Experience

Education

Awards

• Dean’s Award (Fall 2022, Spring 2023, Fall 2024, Spring 2025)

Skills

Languages

Certifications