Carlson is available for hire
Hire CarlsonCarlson Lau
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Developer
Location
Toronto, Canada
Toptal Member Since
May 2, 2022
Carlson is a full-stack developer experienced in developing front end, back end, and CI/CD pipelines. He has experience working in big tech companies such as Amazon, Okta, and IBM, as well as AI startups. Carlson specializes in full-stack web development but also has expertise in scalable database design and DevOps automation.
Portfolio
Okta
JavaScript, Python, React, MySQL, MongoDB, Node.js, Java, Docker...
Eight & Co
React, Firebase, MySQL, Node.js, SQL, Back-end Development...
Okta
React, Node.js, Java, PostgreSQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), JavaScript...
Experience
Availability
Part-time
Preferred Environment
React, Node.js, Python, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB, MySQL, Express.js, Material UI, Stripe, Firebase
The most amazing...
...project I've developed single-handedly is an education platform used by the top-ranking university in Canada with hundreds of registered students.
Work Experience
Software Engineer II
2021 - 2023
Okta
- Developed a new CI/CD platform using React, HTML, CSS, and MUI for the front end and Java Spring Boot for REST APIs on the back end. It automates running Bash scripts to test and build Docker images.
- Led the development of a microservice to run batch ETLs and perform data aggregations from MySQL to MongoDB with Node.js, which can handle over 20 million requests a day.
- Created and optimized MySQL queries, reducing the time from over 20 seconds to under two seconds.
Technologies: JavaScript, Python, React, MySQL, MongoDB, Node.js, Java, Docker, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), AWS Lambda, SQL, APIs, Back-end Development, Front-end Development, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Web Security, Full-stack, Full-stack Development, REST APIs, Databases, Web Development, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), GitHub, Front-end, Architecture, Front-end Architecture
Full-stack Developer
2018 - 2022
Eight & Co
- Developed a React web app that graphs user data and generates relationship and network graphs based on data analytics from a MySQL database.
- Created a custom graphing framework using D3.js that can generate a range of charts and dynamically create nodes to represent data points and their relation to others.
- Used Gmail and Outlook APIs to aggregate data to be stored in the MySQL database and hosted the platform on Google Compute Engine.
Technologies: React, Firebase, MySQL, Node.js, SQL, Back-end Development, Front-end Development, APIs, Heroku, JavaScript, Full-stack, Full-stack Development, REST APIs, JSON, Databases, Cron, CSV, Web Development, CSS, HTML, UI Design, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Data Visualization, Front-end, GitHub, Front-end Architecture
Software Engineer I
2020 - 2021
Okta
- Automated application deployments using Terraform and Amazon ECS clusters.
- Directed the development of automated health metric services of our CI/CD pipeline to aid on-call using Node.js and Python.
- Created and optimized MySQL queries to fetch user data, reducing the time from over 20 seconds to less than two seconds.
Technologies: React, Node.js, Java, PostgreSQL, Amazon Web Services (AWS), JavaScript, REST APIs, JSON, Databases, Web Development, Django
Software Development Engineer Intern
2020 - 2020
Amazon.com
- Developed a dynamic log parsing module in TypeScript in the Alexa media processing team.
- Integrated latency statistics for WebRTC media applications build on the media processing platform, using C and GStreamer.
- Created a visualizer of complex relational graphs, using React and D3.js, of Alexa's media pipeline using data from my log parsing module.
Technologies: React, Node.js, C, Amazon Web Services (AWS), TypeScript, JavaScript, REST APIs, Databases, Web Development
Back-end Cybersecurity Intern
2019 - 2019
IBM
- Developed the pipeline deployment using Docker, Kubernetes, Artifactory, Jenkins, and Ansible playbooks in my DevOps scripts to automate the management of Docker images in development and production.
- Automated code scans to detect bugs and code smells by integrating SonarQube to our Jenkins pipeline, which reduced 200+ critical bugs.
- Dockerized the monolith architecture into an elastic pipeline with cloud architecture.
Technologies: Java, Apache Kafka, Docker, Jenkins, SonarQube, PostgreSQL, Databases
Machine Learning Engineer
2018 - 2019
Athena Education
- Developed NLP engines to determine the correctness of a student's answers to a given question using a NER model.
- Used big data in creating classifiers that will automatically guide students to discover their weaknesses, such as grammar, diction, and sentence structure.
- Implemented a scalable and flexible model in both English and Chinese.
Technologies: Python, PyTorch, Scikit-learn, Heroku, Databases
Junior Full-stack Developer
2018 - 2019
Markdale Financial Management
- Helped develop blockchain, from creating trade bots to performing full-stack development on a content management system using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Node.js with Ubuntu Server.
- Integrated features like analytics of crypto trends and features for depositing, withdrawing, and transferring cryptocurrency.
- Created DevOps scripts to automate setting up the MySQL database and Nginx configurations.
Technologies: Node.js, DigitalOcean, MySQL, JavaScript, Firebase, Databases, Web Development
Experience
Hospital Simulator for Vector Institute
https://github.com/ER-Visualizer/VisualizerVisualizER is a highly configurable emergency room simulator that can simulate various scenarios. Medical professionals and researchers can use it to determine bottlenecks and areas in the emergency room which would benefit most from added resources. It was built for my client, a machine learning research institution, Vector Institute.
MY ROLE
• Developed an optimizing algorithm to detect bottlenecks in Python and data analytics.
• Designed and developed simulation visualizations on the front end.
• Built rolling deployment infrastructure with Docker and Amazon ECS.
MY ROLE
• Developed an optimizing algorithm to detect bottlenecks in Python and data analytics.
• Designed and developed simulation visualizations on the front end.
• Built rolling deployment infrastructure with Docker and Amazon ECS.
Highly Customizable Banking Chatbot
https://carlson-lau.com/projectsMy client, the Toronto Dominion Bank, wanted to investigate the effects of a chatbot's humanization levels when interacting with a customer.
I designed, implemented, and tested both the mobile app and the developer interface. The mobile application is easily extensible and can respond with text, images, and graphs. To maximize the usability of the chatbot, it is portable to iOS and Android. The TD team will be able to create their own rules and recognizable intents to customize the chatbot's behavior and test its performance. The design team provided sample chatbot prototypes and documentation to make the product easier to use.
I designed, implemented, and tested both the mobile app and the developer interface. The mobile application is easily extensible and can respond with text, images, and graphs. To maximize the usability of the chatbot, it is portable to iOS and Android. The TD team will be able to create their own rules and recognizable intents to customize the chatbot's behavior and test its performance. The design team provided sample chatbot prototypes and documentation to make the product easier to use.
Foodhub
https://carlson-lau.com/projectsFoodhub serves as a reminder for expiring food in your fridge by using OCR technology to scan your receipts. It also provides consumer behavioral analytics to businesses and supermarkets.
I led the development of the mobile app using React Native and the deployment of our back-end microservice into Google Cloud.
I led the development of the mobile app using React Native and the deployment of our back-end microservice into Google Cloud.
Skills
Languages
Python, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, SQL, HTML5, Java, C, Bash, TypeScript
Frameworks
Express.js, Material UI, Flask, React Native, Django
Libraries/APIs
React, Node.js, REST APIs, Stripe, PyTorch, Scikit-learn
Tools
Cron, Jenkins, SonarQube, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Rasa.ai, GitHub
Storage
MySQL, JSON, Databases, Cloud Firestore, MongoDB, Firebase Realtime Database, PostgreSQL
Other
APIs, CSV, Web Development, Back-end Development, Full-stack, Full-stack Development, Web Scraping, Software Development, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Progressive Web Applications (PWA), OCR, Front-end Development, Web Security, User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), Front-end, Data Visualization, Architecture, Front-end Architecture
Paradigms
UI Design
Platforms
Apache Kafka, Docker, AWS Lambda, Firebase, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Heroku, Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Education
2017 - 2021
Bachelor of Science (Honours) Degree in Computer Science
University of Toronto - Toronto, Canada
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