Frontend engineer with experience in 6 companies. Proactively solves vague problems by wearing many hats. Built accessible UI components libraries and led teams on 0 to 1 projects. Driven, entrepreneurial, product-minded, and customer-focused.
- Email: daphne.liu97@gmail.com
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/daphliu/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thebetterdaphne
- Resume: https://daphneliu.com/resume.pdf
Skills
TypeScript, React, HTML/CSS, NextJS, Python, Kotlin, Java, JavaScript, JSON, SQL, Unix, Git
Work
Lyft, Frontend Engineer II Aug 2021 – Apr 2023
- On the Design systems team, built UI component library in React, TypeScript, and HTML/CSS used by 100+ frontend engineers.
- Unlocked a $10M government contract by elevating accessibility in all 89 products to meet industry standard (WCAG 2.0).
- Collaborated cross-functionally with 3 designers, 6 senior/staff engs to plan roadmap & ensure cross-platform consistency.
- Led major release of new UI component library version by devising migration plan focused on resilience and adopted type safety across the board. Wrote thorough documentation and rallied a group of early adopters for safe rollout.
- Led shared rides in the web app, gathered requirements, broke down roadmap, ran experiments, and drove features to roll-out, yielding projected annualized impact of $600K profit and $1.5-4.6M bookings.
- Led notifications in web to increase promotion and reminder capabilities beyond mobile, reaching 27K new users per year.
- Ran monthly Frontend All-hands, breaking down knowledge silos and encouraged company-wide adoption of latest tools.
- Unblocked projects by proactively learning backend for notifications and autofill SMS and Android for gift cards.
- Introduced scheduled rides in the web app, leading to an increase of 19.6K+ rides and $530K booking per year.
Copysmith, Product Manager Intern Jan 2021 – Apr 2021
- First Product Manager in a 15-people start-up, acting as a glue between teams shaped product roadmap.
- Increased MRR by 30%, acquired 61% new customers, and supported the company through acquisition.
Lyft, Software Developer Intern June 2020 – July 2020
- Built coupon, shortcuts, payment methods, and dark mode with React and TypeScript for Lyft on the web.
- Added support for A/B testing and created guidelines to set up experiments and control roll-out.
- Selected as one of the 4 out of 180 interns to speak to 250 students on the Intern AMA Webinar.
Yelp, Android Developer Intern Jan 2020 – Apr 2020
- Took ownership of implementation and launch for app-wide features in the Yelp for Business Owner app.
- Using Kotlin, Koin, RxJava, built carousels with nested scrolling content to promote major business features.
- Planned and implemented architecture migration from MVP to MVI for Android alert banner with JUnit tests.
Shopify, Android Developer Intern May 2019 – Aug 2019
- Planned and implemented the WebView remote debugging feature on Shopify’s Android app.
- Developed a notification system on Android with Java, Kotlin, and GraphQL to alert merchants of plugin issues.
- Wrote advanced HTML to Android Spannable parser in Kotlin to render nested bulleted list data.
Hootsuite, Software Developer Intern Jan 2019 – Apr 2019
- Added dynamic loading, category assignment, instant search to app store admin page with React, HTML/CSS.
- Worked with cross-functional teams to launch Hootsuite app store and implemented API endpoints in Scala.
Royal Bank of Canada, Software Developer Intern May 2018 – Aug 2018
- Increased efficiency of commodity tax data lookups by 2 months per year with C# and .NET automation.
- Investigated, improved a 13-year-old system and served as a single point of contact for business and QA teams.
Google, Google CodeU Mentorship program Feb 2018 – May 2018
- Selected to participate in Google CodeU, an invite-only program to be mentored by a Google engineer.
- Built a chat app in Java and introduced offline support by caching HTML pages and CSS with JavaScript.
Speaking
- Speaker, CascadiaJS Conference - "How we Automated our Relationship" - A technical and comedic talk on how my fiancé and I maintain our relationship by automating cooking, laundry, and calendar using NodeJS, Notion/Trello APIs and IoT, in front 250+ attendees in both conferences.
- Speaker, ACM Richard Tapia Conference - "Fueling Your Career With Coffee Chats" - Encouraged and taught 100+ underrepresented students to start networking in the tech industry.
- Panelist, Superposition IV - Spoke on a panel to 220+ high school students at a hackathon answering questions about my experiences and sharing advice to inspire the next generation of women in tech.
- Panelist, Microsoft Higher Education Summit - Spoke on a panel to 150+ educators and university recruiters my experience between internships and university and proposed changes to classroom curriculum and internship structures.
- Emcee, Computer Science Orientation panel – Selected by university to host a panel discussion between 5 club presidents during first-week orientation to help first year students decide what clubs to join.
- Emcee, Diversity in Computer Science Panel – Hosted a panel discussion between 5 industry professionals and led Q&A for underrepresented groups to ask about their experience as women in tech industry.
Workshop
- Speaker, Lyft – Led an accessibility workshop to onboard my team to contribute to improving accessibility in our web app.
- Speaker, Hack the 6ix - Taught an Android workshop at Toronto’s largest summer hackathon to 50+ students on making an Android app using Kotlin, Coroutines, Retrofit, and Google Maps API through live-coding.
- Speaker, Emerging Media Lab – Taught an 3D-modelling workshop in Unity and Blender when working at an AR/VR lab.
- Volunteer - GIRLsmarts4tech – Taught grade 7 girls building a simple website in JavaScript and HTML in a day camp.
Projects
Co-founder, BobaBot Sept 2020 - Apr 2021
- Came up with the idea for a bubble tea machine startup for a class in a team of 6, contributing to business and marketing plans.
- Presented and won $5K in a pitching competition, participated in an incubator & received a 50-100k offer from an investor.
Founder and Co-president, UBC Women in CS Sept 2019 - Apr 2020
- Started UBC Women in CS club, assembling a team of 10 student executives and 3 departmental sponsors, defining the mission and establishing overall infrastructure.
- Represented the club in monthly department meetings to discuss progress and changes to the Computer Science department.
- Executed 4 events throughout the term, such as paint night and board game events, reaching over 90 female CS students at UBC.
Co-Founder, UBC CS Coffee Chat Sept 2019 - Apr 2020
- Matched 150+ lower year to upper year Computer Science students at UBC for monthly coffee chats, providing a chance to ask questions and receive mentorship.
- Wrote a Python script to consume CSV data from Qualtrics forms and generate matching based on preferences.
Team Lead and AR Developer, UBC Emerging Media Lab Jan 2018 – Apr 2019
- Liaised between 7 developers and a professor to build Soil TopARgraphy, an Augmented Reality app for a soil science class, built using Unity, Vuforia, and C#.
- Project presented at 3 conferences, released on app stores, and is ready to be used by 250+ students.
Color Breakdown, Personal Project Oct 2018 – May 2020
- Wrote Progressive Web App with Typescript and React to extract prominent colors from images.
- Ported functionality to separate native Android app in Kotlin and published on Google Play.
Blog
- "Making Nested Lists with Android Spannables in Kotlin" - 8.5K+ views and was published by The Startup, Medium's largest active publication with 8M monthly readers. Taught how to insert nested bullet lists into Android TextView and created a lean sample Android application to walk through a step-by-step approach.
- "My Remote Summer Internship at Lyft" - 3.5K+ views on my internship learnings and takeaways for other students.
- "Advice from Full-timers at Hootsuite to Co-ops" - 1K+ views on my interviews with Hootsuite’s CEO, Vice President,Director, manager, and software engineers to share their advice for future interns.
Awards
- BC Tech Scholarship 2019 - Awarded to students who have a proven passion for technology and a desire to leave a mark in the tech sector. I was featured in a press release, magazine and was invited to meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
- UBC 2030 Competition - Produced a short pitch video for a sustainability competition at UBC and was selected as a winner amongst 40 entries.
- IKB Women in Technology Scholarship 2019 - Awarded on the basis of academic achievement. Tweeted by UBC president Santa Ono.
- VISIER Service Award for Women in Computer Science 2019 - Awarded for community service and student leadership.
- UBC Grace Hopper Conference Scholarship 2018 - Attended the world's largest gathering of women in computing.
- 1st Place, Lumohacks 2017 - 1st place out of 300 participants. Built VR scenarios to help patients tackle phobias with Unity and C#.
- Finalist, nwHacks 2018 - Finalist out of 800+ participants. Devised Android app around NFC functionality to reinvent museum experience.
- 1st Place, International Genetically Engineered Machine 2015 - 1st place out of 36 teams. Genetically engineered E.coli to tackle chronic inflammation. My team and I presented our project in front of 2,500+ participants.
Education
University of British Columbia Sep 2015 - May 2021
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
Random fun facts
- I'm a improv performer and sketch writer.
- I've been roasted on stage at a tech toast show.
- I've won a genetic engineering competition in high school.
- I've won a grape stomping competition.
- I grew up in Taiwan.