Catalin Oancea
Verified Expert in Engineering
Python Developer
Catalin has over seven years of experience developing web services using various languages at top companies such as Facebook, Bloomberg, Bolt, and Fitbit. Having worked as a production engineer at Facebook, his site reliability engineering skills enable him to design and build production-ready services that scale. Catalin's worked mostly in fast-paced teams distributed around the globe, where he has proven to be an excellent communicator.
Portfolio
Experience
Availability
Preferred Environment
Visual Studio Code (VS Code), PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, Subversion (SVN), Git, MacOS, Linux
The most amazing...
...project I've worked on was a coding platform designed to sandbox executables and grad submissions from people preparing for their technical interviews.
Work Experience
People-managing Technical Lead
Bolt
- Developed the public API used by restaurants, stores, and shops to integrate directly with Bolt Food. They can now automate the menu (product catalog) and stock updates and manage orders via a push/pull system.
- Worked on improving the menu system by adding different optimizations and validations. Introduced a sync mechanism between an SQL menu database and an instance of Elasticsearch. The sync is event-based and uses Amazon SNS and Amazon SQS.
- Managed a team of engineers that worked on the public restaurant API.
AI Engineer
Bloomberg LP
- Contributed to the AI search and relevance group, creating a new algorithm for time-aware named entity disambiguation. The search engine takes into account the world context when performing disambiguation and provides accurate suggestions.
- Worked on the research part for a few weeks. The research involved analyzing huge amounts of data using Spark and Hadoop to collect ambiguous search queries. It returned a few results to design a new model to fix this.
- Created a new model that significantly improved the accuracy of query interpretations, from 20% to 86%, in the cases where the query was ambiguous—for example, Amazon fire could be the Amazon product or the fire in the Amazon rain forests.
- Implemented the prediction function of the model in Python and deployed the newly implemented service in their beta environment, where monitoring and performance analysis were performed.
Software Engineer
Fitbit, Inc.
- Took part in the architecture review group for a Fitbit internal platform that exposes core Fitbit metrics, such as steps, calories, active minutes, etc., to other internal services.
- Designed and built large parts of this internal platform using technologies like Node.js, Cassandra, Kafka, Python, Bash, Thrift, and HTTP for communication.
- Worked on the development of this platform using mainly TypeScript and Node.js.
- Mentored two part-time engineers and helped them stay on track with their tasks while making sure they have plenty of new learning opportunities.
- Took part in the process of introducing Node.js in the company and helped developer productivity teams with boilerplate code and documentation to bring Node.js support on par with the existing languages that were in use in Fitbit.
Production Engineer
Facebook, Inc.
- Worked in the data center management and escalations team developing escalation tools.
- Used Python, Hack, Thrift, and React to develop a manual escalation tool—back end plus admin dashboard.
- Improved the usability of their existing tools and automated some escalation procedures.
- Created a management system to add on-call teams and rotations that worked as a provider system for the escalation service.
- Took part in design meetings and discussed ideas about performance improvements and scalability.
Software Engineer
Bookster
- Took part in the development of a recommender system. Used Apache Mahout and Java to implement complex machine learning algorithms.
- Developed back-end tools in C# for providing business people with consumer insights.
- Took part in the service language migration process, migrating code written in PHP to C#.
- Improved the admin dashboard by replacing jQuery with AngularJS.
- Created an internal calendar-like tool used by employees and by the management to request and approve time off.
Experience
Bolt Food Public API
The public API is used by thousands of restaurants across tens of countries.
Bloomberg News Search Query Disambiguation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyOcrzFsb00Bloomberg customers (businesses, governments, philanthropic organizations, etc.) conduct millions of news searches every day. They are looking for close to real-time news and information about companies and investment vehicles. Bloomberg's information retrieval and NLP systems help clients discover the right information they need.
Skills
Languages
TypeScript, Python, JavaScript, HTML, Java, CSS, C#, PHP, Hack, Bash, C++, JavaScript 5, JavaScript 6, Python 3
Frameworks
Express.js, Flask, Apache Thrift, Angular, Spark, Hadoop, Jest, NestJS, OAuth 2, Django
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, jQuery, Fitbit API, REST APIs, API Development, GitHub API, React, Socket.IO, Facebook API, Facebook Login, Facebook Ads API, Google APIs, Mahout, Segment.io, Google Maps, Google Maps API, Python API, SciPy, PySpark
Tools
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), Git, Notion, Subversion (SVN), IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, Apache ZooKeeper, Mesos, Apache Aurora, Solr, Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Looker, Jupyter
Paradigms
Agile Software Development, MEAN Stack, REST, Parallel Programming, Design Patterns, Test-driven Development (TDD), DevOps, Automation, Management
Platforms
Apache Kafka, Google App Engine, Amazon EC2, Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Linux, MacOS, Mixpanel, Heroku, Visual Studio Code (VS Code), AWS Lambda, Jupyter Notebook
Storage
Amazon S3 (AWS S3), MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Redshift, Data Integration, HDFS, PostgreSQL 10
Other
Distributed Systems, APIs, API Integration, Integration, Software Architecture, Back-end, Architecture, Web Services, Solution Architecture, Data Modeling, Cloud Services, Full-stack Development, Airtable, OAuth, Large Scale Distributed Systems, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Neural Networks, Leadership, Team Leadership, People Management, Data Structures, Technical Leadership, Product Development, Serverless, Algorithmic Trading, Encryption, HHVM, Apache Cassandra, Linkerd, A/B Testing, Maps, AWS DevOps, Algorithms, Health, Healthcare IT, Stock Trading, Stock Market, Stock Exchange, Stock Analysis, Deep Learning, Inventory Management, Inventory Management Systems, Full-stack
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and Engineering
Politehnica University of Bucharest - Bucharest, Romania
Certifications
Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter tuning, Regularization and Optimization
deeplearning.ai
Structuring Machine Learning Projects
deeplearning.ai
Neural Networks and Deep Learning
deeplearning.ai
Advanced Python
Python - Data Analysis
Microsoft Technology Associate - Security
Microsoft
Microsoft Technology Associate - Database Administration
Microsoft
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