Edward Zhang
Verified Expert in Engineering
Android and Software Developer
Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
Toptal member since July 27, 2022
Edward is a principal engineer and tech lead with 15+ years of experience delivering distributed platforms, trading systems, and AI-powered products. He combines hands-on architecture with delivery management, stakeholder alignment, and team coaching. Leadership experience spans ETO Markets, Microsoft, ThoughtWorks and Workstream, with freelance delivery of an AI movie generation platform for Elser AI. Focus areas include AI agents, multimodal generation, and latency-sensitive financial systems.
Portfolio
Experience
- Java - 10 years
- JavaScript - 8 years
- Node.js - 7 years
- Spring - 7 years
- Express.js - 7 years
- Technical Leadership - 7 years
- Agile Project Management - 7 years
- React - 5 years
Work Experience
Tech Lead | Solution Architect
ETO Markets
- Owned the architecture and technical direction of core systems, including CRM, Risk Management System (RMS), ETO Plus copy-trading platform, trading integrations, and supporting data services.
- Designed event-driven and fault-tolerant services that process millions of market, account, risk, and transaction records each day while supporting latency-sensitive, high-frequency trading workflows.
- Built several AI market assistants that retrieve current market data and news, verify freshness and source quality, analyze market context, and generate decision-support insights.
Tech Lead | AI Engineer
Elser AI
- Led a team of six engineers to design and deliver an AI movie generation platform, owning the technical architecture and engineering delivery.
- Designed a microservices architecture using Python, FastAPI, and Next.js, with AWS cloud infrastructure managed through Terraform.
- Integrated AI models and platforms, including ChatGPT, OpenRouter, Nano Banana, GPT Image, Seedream, Seedance, Kling, and MiniMax, for multimodal content generation.
- Designed and developed AI agents and workflows to orchestrate these models and tools across the movie generation process.
Principle Engineer
Workstream Technologies
- Drove the initiative of building a chatbot with OpenAI's ChatGPT APIs and Pinecone vector database. Developed the core part with a long chain and deployed it to AWS via AWS Amplify.
- Designed and delivered a unified authorization service following Google's Zanzibar.
- Led a team with five people to split a monolith service into a microservices architecture.
Senior Solution Architect
Zendrive
- Drove the integration with MoneyLion mobile app and web services. Provided high-level design, workflow, and ERD on Figma.
- Worked with MoneyLion's dev team to integrate their mobile app with our SDK product using React Native.
- Complete the integration between Money's back-end services and our APIs platform using Node.js and Webhook.
- Drove end-to-end testing and helped MoneyLion release their mobile app and back-end services to production.
Tech Lead | Senior Software Engineer
Microsoft
- Designed and delivered new failover technology for M365 SharePoint product using C# and Azure.
- Drove virtual teams to design new service rollout processes to improve the quality of our products and applied them across the entire organization.
- Recruited new team members and provided mentorship to help them achieve more.
- Facilitated knowledge-sharing sessions on system design, TDD, and Agile to help team members build knowledge and standardize the way we work.
Tech Lead | Full-stack Engineer
ThoughtWorks
- Led three teams of 20+ people to help Porsche China in its digital transformation. Built mobile apps, web apps, and back-end API platforms using microservices architecture on AWS.
- Developed web applications for their aftersales department using React, Java, Spring Framework, Node.js, Express, and MySQL.
- Developed mobile app and WeChat mini-program for Porsche China using React Native and JavaScript.
- Involved serverless architecture in certain scenarios such as timer jobs, cleanup jobs using AWS Lambda, Step Functions, and CloudWatch Events.
- Worked with DevOps to practice infrastructure as code and manage AWS resources using Terraform.
- Drove the entire delivery process with an Agile approach. Guided the team with TDD and increased unit test coverage to 90%.
- Held regular one-on-one meetings with team members to gather and provide feedback. Provided mentorship for newcomers and veterans to achieve more.
Team Lead｜Full-stack Engineer
Genus
- Refactored and optimized the company's official website using React.
- Developed the risk management service using Java, Spring Framework, MySQL, and ActiveMQ to distribute messages and validate them through risk management-related event handlers.
- Refactored MDS (Market Data System), merged several MDS services based on different data sources into one, integrated with multiple data sources, and provided data query and sub/pub capabilities via RESTful APIs.
- Created a caching layer before the database using Redis. Improved the system's overall performance, increasing throughput from 3,000 to 15,000 per second.
- Recruited new team members and provided mentorship to help them onboard fast.
Senior Android Developer
CIeNET Technologies
- Developed mobile applications for automakers such as Renault and Geely.
- Fixed bugs reported by clients and released to production asap.
- Integrated third-party tools into CI/CD pipelines to scan submitted code for better protection.
Senior Android Developer
HopeRun
- Developed car entertainment systems for automakers such as Chrysler, Hyundai, and Toyota.
- Flew to customer sites for road testing and fixed bugs quickly.
- Interviewed new engineers and helped them onboard fast.
Full-stack Engineer
iSoftStone
- Developed functionality to create, update, publish, and delete content such as books, comics, and movies for IPTV CMS systems.
- Created functionality to notify and synchronize content with downstream systems.
- Joined the OCE Rotation List to help resolve urgent online issues as quickly as possible.
Project History
Failover Service for M365 SharePoint Search Farms
Digital Transformation for Porsche China
Genus Algo Trading System
Mobile Apps for Automakers
CMS (Content Management System) for IPTV
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science
NanJing XiaoZhuang University - Nanjing, China
Skills
Libraries/APIs
MyBatis, React, Node.js, jQuery, REST APIs, React Router, JSON API, Stripe API, Stripe, AWS Amplify, Twilio API, SQLAlchemy, Pydantic, API Development, OpenAI API, OpenAPI
Tools
GitHub, Slack, Apache Maven, Amazon CloudWatch, IntelliJ IDEA, Apache Tomcat, Jenkins, RabbitMQ, Amazon CloudFront CDN, Flyway, Android Studio, Webpack, Git, NGINX, Amazon Cognito, AWS Fargate, JavaScript Debugging, Zapier, ChatGPT, Prisma, Terraform, Apache, Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), Figma, AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Microsoft Exchange, Camunda BPM, ActiveMQ, Gradle, Jira
Languages
Java, JavaScript, Python, SQL, TypeScript, HTML5, Java 9, GraphQL, Java 11, Java 8, XML, UML, C#, Python 3, HTML, Kotlin, R, CSS
Frameworks
Spring, Spring Boot, JUnit, OAuth 2, gRPC, Android SDK, Mockito, Spring MVC, Spring Security, JavaScript MVC, Express.js, Django, Spring JDBC, NestJS, JSON Web Tokens (JWT), Flask, Swing, Redux, .NET, Angular, .NET Core, Jest, React Native, Jakarta Server Pages (JSP), Next.js
Paradigms
Microservices, Agile Project Management, Automated Testing, Scalable Application, Event-driven Programming, Scrum, CQRS, Cross-platform, Agile, Test-driven Development (TDD), Unit Testing, Enterprise Application Architecture, API Architecture, Microservices Architecture, ETL, Back-end Architecture, Serverless Architecture, DevOps, Mobile Development
Platforms
Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, AWS Lambda, Amazon EC2, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Docker, Java EE (Jakarta EE), JEE, Mobile, Eclipse, Twilio, Android, Azure, Linux, Azure Event Hubs, YouTube, AWS IoT
Storage
MySQL, Redis, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, JSON, NoSQL, Relational Databases, Databases, Amazon Aurora, Redshift, Cloud Deployment, MongoDB, Azure SQL Databases, Elasticsearch, SQLite
Industry Expertise
Project Management, Banking & Finance
Other
Spring Cloud, CI/CD Pipelines, Multithreading, APIs, Integrated Development Environments (IDE), Web Development, Software Architecture, Technical Leadership, Team Leadership, Architecture, GitFlow, Fintech, SDKs, IT Support, Single Sign-on (SSO), User Permissions, API Integration, Source Code Review, Code Review, Technical Hiring, Interviewing, Task Analysis, SSL, Front-end, Full-stack Development, Full-stack, Amazon RDS, Native Mobile Apps, Leadership, Solution Architecture, Web Services, Networking, Back-end, Domain-driven Design (DDD), Serverless, Back-end Development, Integration, Debugging, SOAP, React Hooks, JSON REST APIs, Mobile App Development, Back-office System Development, Web Applications, Mobile Applications, Online Ordering, Software Design, CRM APIs, Scalable Architecture, Cloud, Payment APIs, Agile Delivery, Engineering, Product Growth, OAuth, System Design, Infrastructure, AWS Cloud Architecture, API Gateways, Web Servers, Integration Testing, Technical Writing, Cloud Architecture, Enterprise Architecture, Creative Problem Solving, Client-server Model, Distributed Systems, Cloud Platforms, Mobile Apps, Vector Data, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Technical Documentation, Documentation, Software Development, Artificial Intelligence (AI), API Design, ChatGPT API, OpenAI GPT-3 API, Automation Tools, Webhooks, Messaging, Middleware, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), HTTP, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), Algorithms, WebSockets, Technical Architecture, FIX Protocol, FastAPI, System Architecture, Financial Transactions, Online Banking, Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Applicant Tracking Software (ATS), OpenAI, RESTFul APIs, AI-assisted Development, Third-party APIs, Trade Finance, Trading, Encryption, Data Compression, AOSP, Azure Databricks, Payment Gateways, Reporting, Data Analytics, CTO, Okta, Automated Trading Software, Machine Learning, Chatbots, Web Scraping, AI Design, Ajax, AI Agents, Gemini API, Seedance API
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