Welcome to my portfolio
Hello, I'm
Kaiwen Yao
MSc Computer Science Student / Backend & Full-Stack Developer
MSc Computer Science student at University College Dublin with an engineering background from Beihang University. I build production-style backend and full-stack applications with Java, Spring Boot, Go, FastAPI, React, TypeScript, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Kafka, Docker, and Kubernetes, with a focus on reliable systems, clear APIs, and AI-enabled software products.
SKILLS
Technologies I work with
EDUCATION
My academic background
Master of Computer Science
Bachelor of Power Engineering of Flight Vehicles
PROJECTS
Things I've built
EventPulse
AI-Powered Distributed Event Ticketing Platform
2025 - 2026
- Built a distributed ticketing platform with React, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Kafka, Redis, and Kubernetes, using independently deployable API/worker services. Implemented Kafka-based booking, wallet, and cart workflows with Transactional Outbox, idempotent consumers, partition ordering, and broker-failure recovery.
- Implemented multi-replica SSE delivery with Kubernetes Services and Redis Pub/Sub, supporting cross-instance event propagation and reconnect backfill. Deployed SeaweedFS as S3-compatible storage with direct/proxied delivery, soft deletion, and asynchronous cleanup.
- Built a FastAPI + LangChain AI service for event discovery and copywriting, with service authentication and rate limiting. Enforced quality gates with Checkstyle, SpotBugs, and ESLint across GitHub Actions and Jenkins; tested distributed workflows with Testcontainers and Playwright, with GitOps deployments via Argo CD.
Firmament Take-Out
Full-Stack Food Delivery Platform
2025
- Designed separate React 19 + TypeScript applications for customers and merchants, with mobile-first ordering for customers and menu management, order fulfilment, and ECharts analytics for merchants. Isolated /user and /admin API routes with dedicated JWT interceptors, separate signing keys, and independent public-endpoint allowlists.
- Implemented WebSocket-based order updates and Redis caching, reducing average latency by 57.6% across 10,000 requests. Engineered transaction-safe ordering with server-side validation, atomic persistence, controlled state transitions, and automated cancellation of unpaid orders.
- Achieved 92.5% backend line coverage and 90%+ frontend statement coverage. Automated Docker CI/CD with Jenkins on Kubernetes, using ephemeral Maven/Node Pods for testing, image builds, and deployments.
Dublin Bikes Assistant
Intelligent Bike-Sharing & Journey Planning Platform
2025 - 2026
- Built a Python data ingestion pipeline for station availability and weather data, with independent polling, retry handling, transactional writes, and batched PostgreSQL retention cleanup.
- Built a LangChain + DeepSeek AI assistant with location-aware tool calling for live station availability, SSE streaming, and persistent chat history; integrated hourly scikit-learn availability forecasts. Built a journey optimiser that ranks nearby stations and uses Google Maps routing to minimise combined walking and cycling time.
- Separated prediction and conversational workloads into dedicated Python services behind a Spring Boot gateway centralising authentication, business rules, session ACLs, and internal-service access. Delivered five containerised services with Jenkins/Kubernetes CI/CD and quality gates with JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers, and pytest.
UCDHub
Campus Community Platform with AI Advising
2025 - 2026
- Built a React + TypeScript review attachment workflow with Alibaba Cloud OSS, supporting direct uploads, server-side validation, and time-limited presigned downloads.
- Built a tool-calling AI assistant for UCD course discovery, second-hand listings, and rentals, using an OpenAI-compatible LLM API with SSE streaming and Redis-backed chat history. Optimised search with Redis caching, reducing P95 latency by 92.1% (949.7 ms to 74.8 ms) and increasing throughput 11.95× in matched benchmarks with 10 concurrent clients.
- Designed a contribution-based access model and secured user-generated content with UCD email verification, rotating JWTs, Redis-backed revocation, rate limiting, and ownership checks. Containerised React/FastAPI services with Jenkins/Kubernetes CI/CD; built tests with pytest, Testcontainers, Vitest, and React Testing Library.
INTERNSHIP
My internship experience
Software Engineer Intern
- Built TrueMoment, a low-pressure social platform for sharing spontaneous moments through dual-camera photos, developing the backend API end-to-end with Go, Gin, GORM, and MySQL.
- Implemented 9 production modules across authentication, posts, feeds, social interactions, notifications, and search.
- Applied a layered Handler → Service → Repository architecture with JWT authentication and Redis token revocation.
- Integrated AliCloud OSS + CDN for scalable media storage and delivery, with cursor-paginated feed APIs.
- Delivered production deployment with automated unit/integration testing, AliCloud Yunxiao CI/CD, ACR image publishing, and main-branch deployments.
GET IN TOUCH
I'm always open to discussing new projects, creative ideas,
or opportunities to be part of your visions.