Software Engineer · Backend & Data Systems

Wenxuan (Vivian) Cao

CS student at Emory University (GPA 3.94) building production-minded backend systems, data pipelines, and AI infrastructure — with a focus on measurement, reliability, and software that ships.

View work Download resume GitHub
  • 72→91%Retrieval accuracy gain
  • 1.2M+Records processed
  • 900→200msLatency improvement
About

Building systems people can trust

I'm a Computer Science major at Emory with hands-on experience across data engineering, backend development, and AI agent infrastructure. I like work where correctness matters: fixed evaluation sets, load testing, root-cause debugging, and clear interface boundaries.

Recent internships at BridgeAn, AiFinSphere, and HKBA taught me to move fast without guessing — measure first, ship with tests, and own problems from design through deployment.

Experience

Where I've built

Programming Intern

HKBA · Hong Kong Blockchain Association

  • Wrote 40+ Hardhat unit tests (78% coverage); static analysis caught 3 pre-deploy vulnerabilities.
  • Cut production TTFB ~900ms → ~200ms via CDN caching; validated with measurement.
  • Deployed on AWS (EC2, RDS, S3) with Docker; load-tested 50 concurrent connections.
  • Reduced frontend bundle 54% (2.4MB → 1.1MB); Lighthouse score 62 → 84.
AWSDockerNode.jsTesting

Backend & AI Agent Engineering Intern

BridgeAn · Hong Kong

  • Refactored 1,000+ line monolith into maintainable modules; shipped retrieval on Unix/Linux.
  • Rebuilt document retrieval (metadata + two-stage recall/rerank); 72% → 91% on 200-query eval (+26%).
  • Built two-stage LLM drafting agent for M&A CIM sections from a defined data schema.
  • RCA on systemic output failures; documented failure modes for next architecture iteration.
PythonRAGChromaDBLinux

Data Engineer Intern

AiFinSphere · Remote

  • Built Python/SQL ETL on 1.2M+ transaction and review records (Pandas/PySpark).
  • Integrated AWS pipelines (S3, Lambda, Redshift); cut manual processing time ~30%.
  • Designed structured data model mapping fintech compliance requirements to product features.
PythonSQLAWSETL

Research & Chrome Extension Developer

Prompt Regenerator · Atlanta, GA

  • Built rule-based prompt diagnostic system across 4 LLM providers (ChatGPT, Claude, Qwen, Llama).
  • Architected analyzer contract decoupled from UI; shipped as Manifest V3 Chrome extension.
JavaScriptChrome ExtensionsNLP

Researcher & Project Analyst Leader

AI Data Lab · Emory Center for AI Learning

  • Analyzed 10M+ Feeding America donation records with ARIMA forecasting.
  • Cleaned 500K+ records; presented to 250+ attendees; maintained documented open-source repo.
PythonARIMAData Viz
Projects

Selected work

Featured Java

Grid Pathfinding Search

Evolutionary search on square grids — genetic algorithm, hill climbing, ant colony, and memetic methods implemented from scratch with shared fitness harness and scaling experiments to 500×500.

  • Exact-optimal paths through 60×60 grids
  • Logged efficiency & convergence metrics
  • No external libraries
View on GitHub →
Python

Feeding America Donation Analysis

Emory AI Data Lab research: donor reliability clustering and ARIMA time-series forecasting on large-scale operational donation data.

View on GitHub →
React · Next.js

Character Dashboard UI

Admin dashboard UI for AI chat characters — React, Next.js, and MUI. UI contribution to a team RAG project.

View on GitHub →
C# · Unity

Unity Psych Experiment

Protocol-driven psychology task with reaction-time and keypress logging for research workflows.

View on GitHub →
Skills

Technical toolkit

Languages

C, C++, Java, Python, JavaScript, SQL, Bash/Shell

Backend & Cloud

Node.js, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, Redshift), Docker, Linux/Unix, REST APIs

Data & AI

Pandas, PySpark, ETL pipelines, RAG/retrieval, vector DBs, ML coursework, evaluation harnesses

Engineering

Unit testing, load testing, RCA/debugging, Git, performance measurement, OOP, DS&A

Coursework: Systems Programming, Machine Level Programming, Database Systems, Data Structures & Algorithms, Machine Learning, NLP, Data Mining

Contact

Let's connect

Open to software engineering and backend internships for Summer 2027 and beyond. Atlanta-based; open to relocation for the right role.

vivian.cao@emory.edu vivianc0107@gmail.com LinkedIn GitHub Resume (PDF)