Derrick Chenbuilding things that sometimes work

Student

Georgia Institute of Technology BS Computer Science
Expected May 2028

• Coca-Cola First Generation Scholar
• Zell Miller Scholar
• Greek Life - Dir. of Career Dev
• WebDev @ GT
• Blockchain @ GT
• Intramural Sports

Where I've
Worked

• Software Engineer Co-Op Incoming IBM · San Jose, CA · Aug 2026 - Present
  • Incoming for Fall 2026 cohort (AI compliance at scale).
• Software Engineer Intern Walmart · Bentonville, AR · June 2026 - Aug 2026
  • Designed an event-driven stocking confirmation flow processing 3,000+ requests per minute, replacing inventory guesswork with real-time stocking updates and saving a store hundreds of thousands annually.
  • Implemented the backend with Java, Spring Boot, and Apache Kafka, including event mapping, validation, and publishing logic with 90%+ code coverage.
  • Built a Grafana and Prometheus/Apache JMeter dashboard tracking p95/p99 latency, HTTP throughput, Kafka publish rates, and CPU/heap utilization to monitor production metrics.
• Software Engineer Intern BigID · Atlanta, GA · June 2025 - Aug 2025
  • Developed an integration for BigID customers to stream DSPM cases into AWS Security Lake using IAM and S3, allowing customers to centralize DSPM data within their AWS environments.
  • Built the backend in Node.js, using ETL pipelines instead of RESTful APIs to handle terabytes of security data and cut ingestion time by over 100x (hours to minutes).
  • Wrote Jest unit tests achieving 80%+ code coverage and built end-to-end integration tests for DSPM-AWS workflows; used Jenkins to manage test environments and automate cloud deployments.
• Undergraduate Researcher GROWER Research Lab · Atlanta, GA · Aug 2024 - Dec 2024
  • Wrote Python scripts to web scrape power outage data from 13+ sources, expanding the team's dataset coverage by 15% of U.S. states.
  • Cleaned and analyzed datasets with 1M+ records, enabling analysis in emergency response, public investments, and public policy.
  • Collaborated on a subteam of six using Agile methodologies such as daily standups, sprint planning, and pair programming while partnering with Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

What I've
Built

• Ask the Ref Users can input a basketball scenario, and through a series of AI workflows, we determine if the play is Legal or Illegal. We cite the exact rule it breaks (or follows). Currently averaging 1.6K monthly visits and the AI system is a hybrid RAG pipeline Python FastAPI Next.js TypeScript PostgreSQL pgvector Visit ask-the-ref.com ↗
• GT Notes A platform where Georiga Tech students can share and access lecture notes across different courses, semesters, professors, etc. Currently with 480+ users TypeScript React Node.js AWS PostgreSQL Drizzle ORM Visit gtnotes.org ↗

Tech Stack &
Get In Touch