Hao Xu
Verified Expert in Engineering
Full-stack Developer
Palo Alto, CA, United States
Toptal member since September 5, 2023
Hao is a back-end engineer and full-stack veteran with a proven track record of developing services and software solutions for various companies, ranging from small startups to big top-notch corporations. His expertise spans eCommerce, social applications, games, software infrastructures, DevOps, SaaS, and algorithms. Hao is also proficient in big data, AI, and large language models (LLMs) and excels in executing projects and effectively communicating his ideas.
Portfolio
Experience
- Java - 10 years
- C++ - 10 years
- Distributed Systems - 10 years
- Python - 9 years
- Node.js - 8 years
- Ruby on Rails (RoR) - 8 years
- Go - 8 years
- Machine Learning - 7 years
Availability
Preferred Environment
Full-stack, Web3, Ruby on Rails (RoR), Python, Go, Java, C++, Cloud, JavaScript, Algorithmic Trading
The most amazing...
...thing I've accomplished is building multiple applications for startups and large systems, supporting companies from their early stages through growth and IPOs.
Work Experience
Back-end Symfony and AWS Developer
Imagemakers Inc.
- Built many new features according to business requirements and KTLO.
- Guided and built the spammer/reCAPTCHA verification to fight against spammers.
- Oversaw the Symfony framework maintenance work and deployment flow.
- Developed new emails and enhanced a new search capability.
Senior Scala Developer | Zio Framework Expert
Dealermade LP
- Diagnosed and provided guidelines for the performance and scalability issues of the ZIO/Scala framework.
- Developed a Scala async framework solution to scale up/out the current system.
- Provided a new architecture, roadmap, and operation process/documents for the company to use in future development.
Tech Lead
Instacart
- Built the full-stack customer platform and front end for web, mobile web, iOS, and Android.
- Architected the chat and recommendation based on ML, OpenAI GPT API, private LLMA, Finetune, RAG, and LangChain.
- Contributed to the infrastructure and DevOps to ensure the Instacart platform ran smoothly.
- Served as a tech leader in building the Instcart eCommerce platform with Ruby on Rails and GraphQL, the world's biggest Ruby on Rail deployment.
- Architected and built a user authentication platform in Go, serving hundreds of millions of users.
- build central authentication system to support hundred millions users.
Tech Lead
Roblox
- Built the microservice infrastructure and DevOps for the Roblox platform.
- Architected the user spammer, user suspicion detection, and prevention system.
- Improved the platform's performance and scalability to support 10x growth.
- Built next-generation mesh services in Go, handling millions of queries per second and serving hundreds of millions of users.
Tech Lead
Uber
- Spearheaded the development of the company's global real-time logistic platform for both back-end and client side.
- Built a global intelligence platform tailored for conducting competitive analyses.
- Created the next-generation driver system in Go to achieve a tenfold performance boost compared to the Node.js one.
Senior Engineer
Airbnb
- Built the async process framework based on Kafka and operated it.
- Acted as a full-stack engineer building the dev portal and pipeline.
- Created the infrastructure and DevOps for an Airbnb back end.
- Built the world's biggest travel eCommerce marketplace with Ruby on Rails and Java/Go.
CTO
Citrus Lane
- Built the Citrus Lane website to support 200,000+ users on all platforms—web, iOS, and Android.
- Developed systems to operate 100,000+ monthly subscriptions.
- Created systems for the recurring bills of 100,000+ customers.
Software Engineer
- Built the coupon ads and served billions of audience.
- Architected a pipeline to analyze the performance and results of coupon ads.
- Improved the foundation of the ad display and analytics platform.
Engineer
Yahoo!
- Led a team to build Yahoo email. I built YOS, search, and ads platforms.
- Acted as a full-stack engineer lead and built Yahoo Answers, Flickr, and many other social products.
- Built many Yahoo infrastructure data pipelines and Hadoop stacks.
Principal Engineer
Oracle
- Built and supported the global platform of the Siebel system.
- Architected the infrastructure and comm layer for the Siebel system.
- Developed the analytics platform with a team for the Siebel system.
Experience
Uber | Global Service Platforms
I worked for them as a tech lead, spearheading the development of their global real-time logistic platform, their global intelligence platform for competitive analyses, and the next-generation driver system.
Airbnb | Product and Service Infrastructure and Data Flow
http://www.airbnb.comI integrated the team as a senior engineer and tech lead, contributing to the product and service infrastructure and the communication and data flow within the company's systems.
Google | Ads Project
http://www.google.comI joined the project to combine the power of search and ads with AI technology, working on the ads UI and developing coupon ads.
Roblox | Platform Architecture
I worked at Roblox as a tech lead, handling their next-generation platform's architecture, development, and maintenance, moving from a monolithic to a microservice architecture.
Citrus Lane | Back-end Infrastructure, Website, and Apps
I joined them as a tech leader, leading the team to build the back-end infrastructure, website, and apps.
Siebel | Cross-platform Functionality
I played a crucial role in developing the cross-platform functionality for Siebel, enabling seamless operation on Linux, IBM AIX, and Microsoft Windows, with support for multiple databases, including IBM Db2, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server.
Subsequently, Siebel was acquired by Oracle, marking a significant milestone in its history.
Yahoo | Platform, Infrastructure, and Data Storage Systems
http://www.yahoo.comI worked at Yahoo as a principal engineer and tech lead, contributing to multiple tasks regarding the platform, infrastructure, and cloud data storage systems.
Algorithm Trading System
Student Class Selection System
Finance, Legal, and Web Scrap Project
Trading Bots
They could plug in the specific algorithms.
DMX Cat
Video Conference
Ice Diamond
Electronic Accessory
DeFi Solana Smart Contract Web3
One of the Largest Lawyer Sites
Education
Master's Degree in Computer Science
The University of New Mexico - Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Tsinghua University - Beijing, China
Skills
Libraries/APIs
Node.js, Stripe, Stripe API, NumPy, React, Python API, Interactive Brokers API, TWS API, Reddit API, Rails Engines, Beautiful Soup, OpenAI Assistants API, Gmail API, Authorize.net, Office 365 API, REST APIs, Pandas, Google Sheets API, ZIO, Django ORM, PyQt, PySide, JSII, Crawlee, Puppeteer, OpenAI API, Google API, Solana.py, CheerioJS, Goutte, Python Asyncio, Asyncio, Google Maps, Google Maps SDK, Mapbox API, RxJava, jQuery, NCR API, PostgREST, Vue
Tools
Logging, Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), AWS Key Management Service (KMS), Terraform, HashiCorp, Cloud Dataflow, Git, GNU Debugger (GDB), CMake, GitHub, RabbitMQ, ChatGPT, Google Analytics, Docker Hub, BigQuery, Cron, Android Studio, Expo, Azure Active Directory B2C (ADB2C), Hashistack, Azure OpenAI Service, Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), Kafka Streams, Microsoft Power Apps, Zapier, RSpec, Java Development Kit (JDK), Amazon SageMaker, Observability Tools, FileZilla, PuTTY, Apache Tomcat, Apache Ant, IntelliJ IDEA, Google Sheets, NGINX, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Traffic Manager, GTK, Figma, MongoDB Atlas, Elastic, Apache, Visual Studio, Babel, Webpack, WildFly, Microsoft Power Pages, Microsoft Power BI, Apache ZooKeeper, Amazon Cognito, Auth0, Keycloak, Apache Beam, AWS IAM, CTools, Seos
Languages
Python, Go, Java, C++, Ruby, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, Rust, GraphQL, SQL, C#, TypeScript, CSS, C, Snowflake, Scala, Embedded C, Perl, Kotlin, Swift, SAML, Dart, XML, Google Apps Script, HTML5, Visual Basic, XHTML, Embedded C++, Solidity, Python 3, Pine Script
Frameworks
Ruby on Rails (RoR), .NET, Cascades, Django, Boost, Laravel, ASP.NET, gRPC, Spark, Apache Thrift, Qt, Express.js, Selenium, Scrapy, Bootstrap, .NET Core, LlamaIndex, Tailwind CSS, Flutter, React Native, OAuth 2, IdentityServer 4, Next.js, Blazor, Electron, Spring Boot, Symfony, AngularJS, Django REST Framework, Apache Spark, GStreamer, Jakarta Server Pages (JSP), Apache Struts 2, Flask, .NET MAUI, CakePHP, Spring, Redux, Hibernate, Angular
Paradigms
DevOps, Hosting, Microservices, ETL, API Architecture, Continuous Integration (CI), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Business Intelligence (BI), Serverless Architecture, Cross-platform, Mobile Development, Load Testing, API Observability, HIPAA Compliance, Agile Software Development, Automation, Automated Testing, Testing, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Microservices Architecture
Platforms
Linux, Apache Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes, Windows, WordPress, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Firebase, BigCommerce, DigitalOcean, Heroku, Mobile, iOS, Android, Mapbox, Azure, Google Ads, SharePoint, Algolia, HubSpot, MacOS, Amazon EC2, Solidus, JavaFX, Magento, Shopify, Databricks, Amazon, NetBeans, Zendesk, PagerDuty, Xamarin, Unix, Oracle, AWS Lambda, Microsoft Power Platform, Microsoft Power Automate, JVM, Embedded Linux, Toast (Point-of-sale Platform), Blockchain, Neto, Wand
Storage
MySQL, PostgreSQL, NoSQL, Redshift, Data Pipelines, Data Lakes, Cassandra, Redis, MongoDB, Google Cloud, Elasticsearch, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon S3 (AWS S3), JSON, Alibaba Cloud, MariaDB, Datadog, ClickHouse, Google Cloud Spanner
Industry Expertise
Project Management, Accounting, Trading Systems
Other
Software Development, Software, Full-stack, Web3, Cloud, Distributed Systems, Machine Learning, Competitive Intelligence, Infrastructure, SaaS, Cloudflare, Architecture, Optimization, Servers, Platform as a Service (PaaS), Web Scraping, APIs, CI/CD Pipelines, Data Structures, Algorithms, Data Engineering, Orchestration, Webhooks, Linear Algebra, Data Scraping, Web Development, OpenAI, System Design, Back-end, OpenAI GPT-3 API, OpenAI GPT-4 API, Stripe Payments, Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI Programming, Data Scientist, Retrieval-augmented Generation (RAG), Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), Web Services, Algorithmic Trading, Data Science, Deep Learning, Data Analytics, Blade Templates, Scraping, eCommerce, Back-end Development, Large Language Models (LLMs), MERN Stack, CTO, Bots, Cloud Infrastructure, Full-stack Development, Reddit, Google Drive, Integration, Content Management Systems (CMS), API Integration, Google Cloud Functions, Trading, TradingView, Cryptocurrency, Prompt Engineering, Gmail, Email, SDK Development, SDKs, Serverless, Pinecone, Poetry, Computer Networking, Datagram Transport Layer Security (DTLS), Software Engineering, Software Architecture, Navigation, Electric Vehicles, Fivetran, Identity & Access Management (IAM), OpenID Connect (OIDC), Duende, SAML-auth, SecOps, Mobile App Development, Advisory, Leadership, Scalability, Technical Leadership, Startups, Coaching, Engineering, Process Development, Web Scalability, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4, Office 365, PWA, Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), Gemini API, DNS, htaccess, GoDaddy, SEO Tools, Hardware, Firmware, Low-level Programming, USB, MDM, Jamf, Mobile Device Management (MDM), Fintech, Profiling, Embedded Rust, Embedded Systems, Internet of Things (IoT), Accessibility, Monitoring, Machine Learning Operations (MLOps), OpenTelemetry, Data Warehousing, Prometheus, Website Data Scraping, Solana, Smart Contracts, Crypto, Containers, Stable Diffusion, Marketing Technology (MarTech), ElevenLabs Solutions, Chatbots, Live Chat, eBay, HL7, Trading Bots, Big Data, Big Data Architecture, Data Cleansing, Data Handling, Concurrency, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), Containerization, Embedded Software, Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Finance, Equities, Equity Trading, Hedge Funds, Options Trading, Profit & Loss (P&L), Stock Market, Stock Exchange, Trade Finance, Fund Management, Tickers, Stock Trading, FastAPI, Performance Tuning, WebSockets, Time Series Modeling, Image Generation, SOC 2, Mapbox SDK, Middleware, Jetpack Compose, Quantitative Analysis, Quantitative Finance, MVC Frameworks, Quarkus, Large Scale Distributed Systems, Single Sign-on (SSO), Technical Architecture, Technical Writing, Mobile Apps, Large-scale Projects, Social Security, IDP, API Connectors, Cloud Architecture, Airtable, PDF, Front-end, Team Leadership, Relational Database Services (RDS), SLAM, Simultaneous Localization & Mapping (SLAM), Embedded Development, TouchGFX, Point of Sale, Clover POS, Lightspeed, Revel POS, Square Payment Gateway, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Speech Recognition, Security, Games, Sports, Multi-factor Authentication (MFA), Dynamic Load Balancing, Plugins, PKI, LangChain, DDS, PDF Scraping, Midjourney, Strapi, Analysis, Dashboards, AI Website Builders, Buffer Management, ExpressIF, Bluetooth, ESP32, ACH Payments, Google, PayPal, Payment APIs
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