Kai Hirota

Software Engineer

Experience 🖋️

Immutable

Sep 2022 - Present

Immutable is a global leader in gaming on a mission to bring digital ownership to every player by making it safe and easy to build great web3 games.

  • Core Engineering team focuses on scaling our code patterns whilst creating reliable and reusable tools that improve the internal developer experience.

Software Innovation Institute, Australian National University

Software Engineer (Casual Worker)

Canberra ACT, Australia

Feb 2022 - Aug 2022

The Software Innovation Institute is an ANU flagship initiative comprising an expert cross-disciplinary team of researchers, research engineers, software engineers and students to solve complex client problems at scale. The Institute undertakes software development projects requiring the development and linking of new research techniques to build solutions for clients.

  • Stack: Dart, Flutter, Python, Azure, Docker, GitHub Action, PostgreSQL, FastAPI
  • Contributed to front-end & back-end development of a cross-platform Flutter application for enabling instructors and students to give & receive assignments or marks.
  • Led migration from single virtual machine deployment to continuous test, integration, and deployment of loosely-coupled containers, executed incrementally using GitHub Actions.
  • Designed, implemented, and shipped the database REST API to abstracting storage layer CRUD operations, following a lift-and-shift pattern of refactoring.
  • Reduced page load times drastically by implementing a client-side caching layer, storing API response data to an in-memory key-value store.

Mojexa

Software Engineer Intern

Canberra ACT, Australia

Mar 2022 - Jul 2022

  • Stack: Unreal Engine 5, C++, Terraform, AWS, Lambda, Serverless, Dynamo DB, API Gateway.
  • Created an Unreal Engine plugin for creating in-game markers to mirror real-world locations.
  • Markers can mirror real-world locations either in real-time or in playback by ingesting DynamoDB stream or reading from the table.
  • Created code example for easily duplicating the database access Rest API using Terraform, API Gateway, Lambda, and DynamoDB.

Airbnb

Aug 2019 - Feb 2020

  • Use Python and SQL to collect, query, analyze, and generate data.
  • Optimize existing SQL queries to run more efficiently (i.e. reduce execution time by ~40%).
  • Build reports, visualizations and dashboards to help teams measure the performance of their business initiatives.
  • Develop data-driven business insights to formulate actionable recommendations for cross-functional stakeholders.
  • Apply statistical tests to make inferences.

Fracta

Data Engineer

Redwood City, CA

Sep 2018 - May 2019

Fracta uses machine learning to predict failure of water pipes.

  • Use Python and SQL for ad-hoc ETL and data analysis on geospatial data.
  • Automate report generation for performance evaluation of the machine learning model.
  • Create data visualizations and interactive maps to effectively communicate findings to technical and non-technical audiences.

Education 🎓

Australian National University

Master of Computing (Machine Learning)

Canberra ACT, Australia

Mar 2021 - Aug 2022

  • ENGN6528 Computer Vision
  • COMP8600 Statistical Machine Learning
  • COMP6490 Natural Language Processing
  • COMP6300 Computer Organisation & Program Execution (Assembly)
  • COMP6442 Software Construction
  • COMP6331 Computer Networks

University of Sydney

Master of IT (Transferred without completion) (Data Science)

Sydney, Australia

Mar 2020 - Jan 2021

  • Probability and Statistics
  • Algorithms
  • Database Management Systems
  • Software Engineering in Java
  • Machine Learning
  • Information Theory and Self-Organization
  • Advanced Data Models

Santa Clara University

Bachelor of Commerce (Information Systems & Analytics)

Santa Clara, California, USA

Oct 2016 - Oct 2018

  • Introduction to Programming in C
  • Systems Programming
  • Operation Management
  • Strategic Analysis Capstone
  • Statistics & Data Analysis