Chenrui Zhang Resume

SOFTWARE ENGINEER

Backend systems.
Intelligent
experiences.

I’m Chenrui. I build Java backends, cloud services, and AI-assisted products — taking ideas from architecture to implementation.

Explore my work Download resume
CURRENTLYSoftware Engineer at Coursistant
BACKEND ENGINEERINGCLOUD SYSTEMSAI AGENTS & RAGSYSTEM INTEGRATION

01 / EXPERIENCE

From architecture
to implementation.

Building the services behind learning platforms, customer conversations, and donation workflows.

SEP 2024 — PRESENT

Coursistant

Software Engineer

Los Angeles, CACurrent role

An AI-assisted learning platform,
built from the backend up.

Led end-to-end backend development, defining architecture and implementation plans, allocating tasks, and coordinating delivery with product and engineering teams.

  • Developed Spring Boot services and exposed RESTful APIs through AWS API Gateway for application workflows and AI agent data access.
  • Reduced average response time for a frequently accessed read API from 700 ms to 200 ms with scheduled Redis cache warming, composite MySQL indexes, and connection pooling.
  • Built an agent for instructors and students that combines API tool calling and RAG for data queries and updates, homework assistance, and study planning.
JavaSpring BootAWSMySQLRedisAI agents
MAY — AUG 2024

NextTier

Software Engineer Intern

Sacramento, CA

Event-driven services for
AI-assisted customer conversations.

Designed an AWS backend using SQS and Lambda for asynchronous intent classification and response generation, with sub-second end-to-end latency.

  • Architected DynamoDB storage supporting 10K concurrent conversations, with single-digit millisecond reads and 99.9% uptime.
  • Built JUnit and Mockito testing for hundreds of conversational scenarios, collaborating with backend teammates.
  • Implemented CI/CD with GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, and CloudFormation to streamline deployment and support zero-downtime releases.
AWS LambdaSQSDynamoDBCI/CDJUnit
MAY — AUG 2023

Psychological Assistance Foundation

Software Engineer Intern

Remote

A smoother path from
donation intent to payment.

Built and maintained donation APIs with Spring Boot, MySQL, and Stripe, handling payment creation, payment status notifications, and donation record updates.

  • Developed a responsive Vue.js donation interface and reduced average page load time by 71% through code splitting, lazy loading, image optimization, and prioritized data fetching.
Spring BootStripeMySQLVue.js

02 / SELECTED PROJECTS

Built to solve
something real.

From connecting music apps to a car display to moving data through streaming pipelines.

NUOMI PLAYERSYSTEM OVERVIEW
Music.
Along for
the ride.
Music appsNuomiAndroid Auto
METADATA · LYRICS · CONTROLS

ANDROID & SYSTEM INTEGRATION / 01

Nuomi Player

September 2025 — Present

Bring third-party music apps into Android Auto, with in-car playback control, synchronized track information and artwork, and lyrics for supported sources.

Built a Java integration layer around MediaSession and MediaBrowserService, with automatic session recovery and validation of asynchronous callbacks.

JavaAndroid SDKMediaSessionRobolectric
Inside the implementation

Bounded retries help recover lost sessions. Callback validation prevents old metadata and lyrics from replacing the current track when users switch apps or reconnect.

JUnit and Robolectric regression tests cover session replacement and out-of-order updates. GitHub hosts the project documentation and downloadable releases; the latest APK and the published source may differ.

Explore on GitHub
DATA STREAMINGIBM COOP PROJECT
500,000+

messages processed per day

SourcesKafkaSparkAnalytics
INGEST · PROCESS · OBSERVE

DATA ENGINEERING / 02

Data Streaming Platform

IBM Coop Project · June — September 2022

Collaborated with IBM engineers to integrate external data sources into an Azure-based platform and build end-to-end pipelines with Python and Spark.

Configured and operated Confluent Platform components to process and manage more than 500,000 messages per day for downstream analytics and visualization.

Apache KafkaPythonSparkAzure
Inside the implementation

Worked with Kafka Connect, Schema Registry, Kafka Cluster, and Control Center across data ingestion and platform operation. The project combined streaming infrastructure with Python and Spark processing workflows.

03 / BACKGROUND & TOOLKIT

A systems mindset.
A builder’s toolkit.

My work connects backend engineering, cloud infrastructure, and applied AI. My academic background spans computer engineering, computer science, and economics.

EDUCATION

2023 — 2025

New York University

MS, Computer Engineering

GPA 3.62
2018 — 2023

University of California, Davis

BS, Computer Science
BA, Economics

Dean’s Honor List

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Languages

Java, Python, SQL, JavaScript, TypeScript, C++, Bash

Backend & testing

Spring Boot, Spring Security, Hibernate, FastAPI, REST APIs, Maven, JUnit, Mockito, Postman

Data & messaging

MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, DynamoDB, Apache Kafka, Amazon SQS

Cloud & delivery

AWS (Lambda, S3, RDS, API Gateway), Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Git, GitHub Actions, CI/CD

AI & retrieval

RAG, API tool calling, LangChain, LangGraph, Pinecone, PyTorch, Apache Tika

04 / GET IN TOUCH

Let’s build
what’s next.

Have a backend or AI engineering opportunity?
I’d be happy to connect.

GitHub ↗Nuomi Player ↗
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