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Kenn Ejima
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Developer
Tokyo, Japan
Toptal member since July 31, 2018
Bio
Kenn is an experienced full-stack developer who has built many web apps, API platforms, and native mobile apps from scratch over the past two decades. His core skills are versatile—data modeling, API design, maintainable code, beautiful UI/UX, TCP/IP networking, and optimizing DB performance. Kenn wrote one of the most referenced articles about the technical comparison between MySQL 8 and PostgreSQL 10. https://hackernoon.com/showdown-mysql-8-vs-postgresql-10-3fe23be5c19e
Portfolio
Admit AI
Remix, PostgreSQL, Drizzle, Socket.IO, WebSockets, OpenAI, Render, Sentry...
Dot Product AI
Remix, React, Node.js, TypeScript, FastAPI, Vector Data, Qdrant, PostgreSQL...
Dumper.io
Linux, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, SQL, Debian, Security, Kernel, MacOS, DevOps
Experience
- PostgreSQL - 20 years
- DevOps - 20 years
- MySQL - 13 years
- Remix - 3 years
- TypeScript - 3 years
- React Router - 3 years
- Tailwind CSS - 3 years
- Drizzle - 2 years
Preferred Environment
Remix, PostgreSQL, Tailwind CSS, TypeScript, Qdrant, Cloudflare, React Router, Large Language Models (LLMs), Multimodal Models, SQL
The most amazing...
...thing I've built is a top-5 ranked mobile games' back end, which scaled from 0 to 30 million users in three years at under $3,000/mo to handle millions of DAUs.
Work Experience
Co-founder and CTO
2023 - PRESENT
Admit AI
- Built a full-fledged LLM app where GPT-4 Turbo reviews college admissions essays in 10 days while working closely with a business domain expert through wireframe using Miro.
- Used the JSON mode of GPT-4 Turbo and @streamparser/json to parse the streamed response from OpenAI and applied the proofread result and comments in real-time on the user interface using WebSockets/Socket.io.
- Iterated over natural language processing to validate if the user submission looks like a real essay.
Technologies: Remix, PostgreSQL, Drizzle, Socket.IO, WebSockets, OpenAI, Render, Sentry, Postmark, Cloudflare, Docker, Node.js, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, TypeScript, SQL, Security, MacOS, DevOps
Founder
2023 - PRESENT
Dot Product AI
- Developed the entirely new AI app with a brand new tech stack—Remix front end and FastAPI back end.
- Incorporated OpenAI models to implement RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) using the Qdrant vector database.
- Sent back a chat response with SSE (server-sent events) for a faster response.
Technologies: Remix, React, Node.js, TypeScript, FastAPI, Vector Data, Qdrant, PostgreSQL, Cloudflare, Prisma, Tailwind CSS, Framer Motion, Socket.IO, Server Sent Events (SSE), OpenAI, Sentry, PostHog, Vitest, SQL, Security, MacOS, DevOps
Founder
2017 - PRESENT
Dumper.io
- Provided support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis development.
- Built an agent library for Rails that safely runs inside the customer's app.
- Developed an AWS federation to generate a temporary authorization to S3.
- Integrated a Stripe subscription with webhook handling.
- Implemented a fast aggregation for the charts in the dashboard.
Technologies: Linux, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, SQL, Debian, Security, Kernel, MacOS, DevOps
Head of Japan
2018 - 2022
Quora
- Contributed over the four years to the Japanese Quora growth: it was the fastest among different languages—a cross-functional team with the i18n product, community managers, moderators, and comms.
- Built an automated framework with an ML model to predict the LTV of a cohort of users and bid per CPA accordingly in the US/English market—a cross-functional team with marketing, data science, and engineering.
- Executed (Japanese i18n PM), from NLP to product design, a wide range of core product improvements for the Japanese based on split testing and persuasive intuition as one of the power users.
Technologies: Python, Jupyter Notebook, Machine Learning, MacOS
Co-founder and CTO
2013 - 2017
East Meet East
- Managed a team of highly motivated developers and designers.
- Implemented a multifaceted profile search and ranking algorithm with many fields, including proximity.
- Developed antispam methods, including AI/machine learning assistance, image analysis, hell banning, and more.
- Enabled subscriptions via iOS in-app purchase and Stripe.
- Used a binomial proportion confidence interval on profile visits to approximate popularity rating.
Technologies: Swift, Redis, MySQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, NGINX, Linux, Objective-C, SQL, Debian, Security, Kernel, MacOS, DevOps
Chief Architect
2009 - 2013
Pankaku (Acquired by Colopl)
- Built and scaled Pankia, a multitenant BaaS for iOS and Android, from zero to 30 million users in three years, where multiple iOS apps ranked in the top five in the US.
- Designed a P2P protocol (semi-TCP over UDP) that passes through the firewall between mobile devices.
- Kept the infrastructure cost under $4,000 with few back-end engineers.
- Provided multi-language support for resources including leaderboards, achievements, items, and grades.
- Composed a novel leaderboard algorithm where every user can know their ranked position with a good spatial-temporal tradeoff, even with millions of players using exponential buckets for scores.
- Implemented Knuth's on-the-fly algorithm for variance applied to geometric mean to detect an anomaly in the response time data of HTTP endpoints.
Technologies: Objective-C, HAProxy, Redis, MongoDB, MySQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, SQL, Debian, Linux, Security, Kernel, MacOS, DevOps
President
2005 - 2009
Infoteria USA
- Incorporated a US entity for a Japanese company which is now publicly traded.
- Built Lingr, one of the world's first chat apps that used Comet for a persistent connection via HTTP.
- Rented space in a data center in San Francisco, built servers, a Cisco router, and so on, and set them up on-site with the console.
Technologies: Java, MySQL, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Ruby, SQL, Debian, Linux, Security, Kernel, MacOS, DevOps
Director
2000 - 2005
Infoteria
- Identified requirements, determined specifications, and managed the release timelines for EAI/ETL products.
- Managed product integrations at large enterprises in different industries in Japan—from manufacturing to finance to telecom to real estate.
- Joined multiple committees to define XML-based industry standards such as RosettaNet, ebXML, etc.
Technologies: Java, MacOS
Engineer
1998 - 1999
Oracle Japan
- Configured and performed benchmarks to beat competitors for Oracle OLAP products, using the highest-end hardware, such as the Sun Starfire series.
- Consulted for Oracle's most important customers as a data warehousing specialist to define schemas for analytics.
- Successfully improved the performance of a huge SQL with more than 100 lines of code.
Technologies: OLAP, Oracle, SQL, Debian, Security, Kernel, MacOS, DevOps
Experience
Dumper.io
This project involved a database backup as a service. I built everything from scratch—including the back-end, the front-end, the API, the API consumer library, the Linux infrastructure, and the visual elements.
A key challenge was that we needed to support multiple databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis.
A key challenge was that we needed to support multiple databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and Redis.
East Meet East
The number-one online dating app for Asian Americans. As co-founder and CTO, I built the infrastructure, the back-end, some of the front-end, and the early versions of the iOS app all the while managing the team of developers and designers.
As a consumer-oriented app, some of the challenges included fighting spam and fraudulent activities. Another unique problem with online dating is the multifaceted, multidimensional search for profiles and sort combined with multiple factors which included the Wilson score to represent desirability.
As a consumer-oriented app, some of the challenges included fighting spam and fraudulent activities. Another unique problem with online dating is the multifaceted, multidimensional search for profiles and sort combined with multiple factors which included the Wilson score to represent desirability.
Pankia
A BaaS for mobile game developers. It has all the features for a gaming platform that handles accounts, devices, friends, push notifications, leaderboards, achievements, and translations to multiple languages.
On top of that, we designed a fast-and-reliable P2P protocol that passes a firewall between devices which enabled game state sharing in the order of tens of milliseconds.
On top of that, we designed a fast-and-reliable P2P protocol that passes a firewall between devices which enabled game state sharing in the order of tens of milliseconds.
Education
1994 - 1998
Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Applied Mathematics (Computer Science)
Kyoto University - Kyoto, Japan
Certifications
JANUARY 1999 - PRESENT
Network Specialist (Japan)
Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry
DECEMBER 1998 - PRESENT
Oracle Master Gold
Oracle
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Stripe API, jQuery CDN, Sidekiq, Resque, React, Drizzle, React Router, Jemalloc, Facebook API, jQuery, Node.js, Framer Motion, Socket.IO
Tools
NGINX, Monit, Sentry, Git, Sublime Text, Prisma, Vitest
Languages
SQL, CSS, SCSS, Haml, Ruby, Objective-C, Java, JavaScript, Swift, Python, TypeScript
Frameworks
Ruby on Rails (RoR), Remix, Tailwind CSS
Paradigms
DevOps, Actor Model, OLAP
Platforms
iOS, MacOS, Kernel, Debian, Linux, Oracle, Jupyter Notebook, PostHog, Docker
Storage
Redis, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), Oracle RDBMS, MongoDB
Other
Comet, P2P, HAProxy, In-app Purchases, Networking, Vector Data, Qdrant, WebSockets, Render, Large Language Models (LLMs), Multimodal Models, Security, Machine Learning, Algorithms, FastAPI, Cloudflare, Server Sent Events (SSE), OpenAI, Postmark, Radix UI
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