Hey, I'm Ken!

Welcome to my corner of the internet! I'm currently a software engineer at HPE. I'm a 🐕🦺 CMU 23' masters alum, 🐦 JHU '21 undergrad, was born in 🇺🇸 and grew up in 🇭🇰. I'm a learner and a hobby collector at heart - at work, my goal is to touch as many pieces of a tech stack as I can, and at home I love deep-diving into both technical and creative projects. This site aims to showcase everything that I've worked on, so please take a look!
This website is a work in progress, so please excuse the simple layout as I build it from scratch.
Where I've Worked
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Cloud Software Engineer I @ HPE
July 2023 - Present | Andover, MA
- Contributed to an overhaul of Aruba Central, reimagining its cloud-based networking management interface, streamlining configuration workflows, and integrating new data center networking functionality
- Led API design (GraphQL) and UI integration (React) for features including network connectivity graph visualization, historical state troubleshooting, and a solar system-based navigation menu
- Developed backend data pipelines, implemented API validation, and added a retry-mechanism to ensure robustness and data consistency in a Java (Spring Boot) microservices ecosystem
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Software Engineering Intern, Voice AI @ SoundHound
May 2022 - Aug 2022 | Santa Clara, CA
- Developed features for the natural language understanding module of a voice-based restaurant ordering system
- Lead effort to support multi-location item availability, providing value for future clients such as chain restaurants
- Improved system’s understanding of user phrasings, processing of intents, and naturalness of generated responses
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Frontend Engineering Intern @ Hex Trust
Jun 2020 - Aug 2020 | Hong Kong
- Developed features and bug fixes for HexSafe, an enterprise crypto custody platform currently in production
- Devised custom workflow to migrate dozens of deprecated JQuery components to React, improving performance and reliability of the user interface
- Designed and implemented new UI workflows, reducing number of clicks needed to perform common tasks such as deposits/withdrawals
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Software Engineering Intern @ GrubMarket
Jun 2019 - Aug 2019 | San Francisco, CA
- Implemented front-end features (Stripe integration, geofencing, shopping cart, etc), UI updates, and bug fixes for a grocery e-commerce app operating in 15 states with ≥10,000 active users
- Updated Java backend API to ensure compatibility with new front-end functionality
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Frontend Engineering Intern @ Denizen Financial
Jun 2018 - Aug 2018 | San Francisco, CA
- Contributed to active development of a hybrid mobile app built using the Angular-based Ionic framework for a fintech startup.
Featured Projects
Here are some notable projects and publications I've worked on during my time at CMU.-
MIIS Capstone Project - ESPnet ONNX
Optimizing the ESPnet speech toolkit for production applications
CMU | 2022
w/ Karthik Ganesan, Samarth Navali, Masao Someki, Prof. Shinji WatanabeIn this project, we optimized the open-source ESPnet speech toolkit to support ONNX exporting via the PyTorch ONNX API.
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NeuroMV
A Neural Music Visualizer
CMU | 2022
w/ Kayo Yin, Maya Shen, Kevin ChenIn this project, we visualize songs using images that pulsate and move along with music using a type of neural network called a Compositional Pattern Producing Network (CPPN).
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Pipeline models for VQA on VizWiz
Tackling challenges in visual question answering for the blind community
CMU | 2022
w/ I-Tsun Cheng, Qi Jiang, Lyuyang Hu, Yuanyuan Wang -
Fig-QA - (Published @NAACL 2022)
Testing the ability of language models to interpret figurative language
CMU | 2021
w/ Emmy Liu, Chen Cui, Prof. Graham NeubigIn this project, we designed and crowdsourced a novel benchmark dataset containing pairs of similes/metaphors along with their literal interpretations. We then analyzed the performance of modern language models to understand their strengths and limitations for this task. Published at NAACL 2022.
For a full list of all my projects, check out the archive.
Creative Portfolio
Aside from AI/ML and software projects, I've also worked on a lot of hobby projects in game development, music production, photography, 3D modeling, and more! I've showcased a few below, check out the rest in the archive.
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Farm of the People
A 2D farming game with a dark humor twist - made for Global Game Jam 2023
CMU | 2023
w/ Brandan, Josh, Chelsea, ShellyThis was my first in-person game jam, I had a lot of fun working with a group from my game development class on this project! I took the lead on programming, developing most of the core game mechanics and integrating everyone’s work into the Unity project. Check it out on itch.io!
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Song of the Elements
A 3D VR spellcasting game - made for Global Game Jam 2022
Personal | 2022
This was my first experience at a game jam, with a team I found remotely through Discord. For this game, I was primarily responsible for 3D environment art, level layout in Unity, and sound/music. Check it out here!
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Planetary Defender
A simple arcade-y space shooter game made with Unity
Personal | 2022
w/ Dan, Esmolis, Jeremy, Rafael, SanjitThis was my first major project in Unity, made to learn the fundamentals of the game engine. All of the programming and art assets were made from scratch by me. Play it on itch.io!
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Synthesia (EP)
An EP of original music I produced
Personal | 2017
Synthesia is a 5-track synthpop EP that I produced and released back in high school, but I’m still very proud of it! Take a listen below - my favorite tracks are Sensate and Right Side.
Contact Me
I'm currently looking for full-time opportunities after graduation, so please reach out at kenzheng99@gmail.com if you have any opportunities that might interest me!