About Me
Hi and welcome to my site!
I am a professional Software Engineer with more than 9 years of experience.
I have a Master degree in Computer Engineering and have worked with
various programming languages, tools and frameworks.
I currently live and work in Switzerland.
Professional Skills
Programming / Markup languages
Go
Java
Bash
C++
Python
HTML
CSS
Javascript
TypeScript
Dart
SQL
Tools and frameworks
Linux
Git & Mercurial
Google Cloud Platform
Google Kubernetes Engine
Docker
Angular
Angular Dart
GRPC
Bazel
Protobuffers
Apache Kafka
Work Experience
Software Engineer Ⅲ (Ⅱ initially) at Google
Zürich, Switzerland
Full stack SWE
Google Shopping / Merchant Center (Angular Dart, Java, C++)
Worked on a feature that automatically crawls Website merchant offers
adds them into Google Merchant Center (Angular Dart, Java).
Created a batch job for choosing the top performing offers from a merchant's website and
deduplicating them against the merchant managed offers
(C++).
Added advanced Data Source management functionality into Google's Next version of Merchant
Center.
The functions are used by large merchants who spend >20 billion USD on Google Shopping
advertisement (Angular Dart, Java).
Worked with Data pipelines gathering merchant usage metrics by aggregating offers data (>200
TB
daily) into a readily available dated table format (Java).
March, 2023 - Present
Full stack SWE (Frontend & Backend)
Google Assistant / Duplex on the Web (Golang, C++, Angular/TS)
March, 2022 - March, 2023
Project automating common / repetitive website workflows (e.g. checkout or booking).
Some of my contributions:
- Created a dashboard for analyzing and debugging client runs (Angular/TS).
- Integrated our systems with an A/B testing framework for experimenting with 2 or more workflows for each website domain (C++).
- Build internal tools for creating website automation scripts (Golang, Angular/TS).
Infrastructure developer
Core / Google Cloud (Golang, Java)
We extended it with Open Source solutions, while running on Google Kubernetes Engine as a Borg replacement. Contributions include:
February, 2019 - March, 2022
Worked on an internal development & production platform that works on top of Google's Borg. We extended it with Open Source solutions, while running on Google Kubernetes Engine as a Borg replacement. Contributions include:
- I made the internal Go framework able to run on Google Cloud Platform, by adding modules for certificate management, monitoring and production configuration (Golang).
- Implemented an automated mechanism for setting up the production of a new server, including the release processes, configuration, monitoring and access management (Golang, Python).
Teaching Assistant at Technical University of
Cluj-Napoca
Oct, 2017 - Jan, 2019
Teaching students Object Oriented Programming and Fundamental Algorithms laboratory classes.
Thought and assessed the knowledge of students in core Software Engineering concepts.
Java developer at Tora Trading Systems,
Cluj-Napoca
Java developer
Sep, 2015 - Dec, 2018
Working on a compliance server, as part of a bigger distributed OEMS trading application.
I added a flexible limit setting for risk management in free-text format, based on an explit set of keywords (for example: "exposure < 0.05 and bid > 500").
Worked on a very low latency Market Data distribution service that was connecting to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The server needed to handle a very high throughput in one instance (>14000 QPS) at <7μs latency, in just one server instance. I added lock-free concurrent queues and managed to bring the latency down to <3μs (capable of handling >333000 QPS).
I added a flexible limit setting for risk management in free-text format, based on an explit set of keywords (for example: "exposure < 0.05 and bid > 500").
Worked on a very low latency Market Data distribution service that was connecting to the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The server needed to handle a very high throughput in one instance (>14000 QPS) at <7μs latency, in just one server instance. I added lock-free concurrent queues and managed to bring the latency down to <3μs (capable of handling >333000 QPS).
Software developer intern
Mar, 2015 - Aug, 2015
Learned typical programming pitfalls, design patterns and some tips around multithreaded
programming
in Java.
Software developer intern at Accesa.eu,
Cluj-Napoca
Jun, 2014 - Sep, 2014
Learned C# and worked with MVC, Entity Framework,Team Foundation Server on a web based resource
management service that was used internally.
Education
Master's Degree, Computer Networks and Distributed Systems from Technical
University of Cluj Napoca,
2016 - 2018
Followed up my bachelor's with more specialized courses about Networking.
Dissertation : High performance concurrent data structures
Bachelor's degree, Computer Engineering from
Technical University of Cluj Napoca,
2012 - 2016
Learned the most common engineering topics (mathematics, physics) and then focused
on software developemnt, while also learning about the hardware details behind computers.
Thesis : Clique based social graph clustering
Personal projects
During University
- A simulation game with trains and railroad switches (Java).
- Tetris on Arduino with a LED matrix display (C).
- An 8 bit microprocessor on a FPGA (VHDL).
- Road obstacle detection using V-Disparity (C++).
- First person shooter like simulation (OpenGL, C++).
- A simple pseudocode-like programming language using Yacc (C).
- A mock design for an office network: floor plan drawing with all devices, cables + device choice and cost estimates.
- Small car racing simulation game (Unity, C#).
Afterwards
- This web version of my Resume (HTML+CSS+JS).
-
A Romanian politicians Credibility dashboard
(code
deployed at
florinbalint.com/factual_checker):
- It crawls the factual.ro website periodically for statements and their truthiness (Python).
- Shows statistics about politicians and parties (HTML+CSS+JS).
-
A simple load balancer (code,
Golang). Features:
- round robin or connection count weighted balancing algorithms
- health checking
- TLS termination
- yaml, xml, json or textproto configuration
- simple service discovery
- A distributed unique identifier algorithm for Kubernetes (kubeflake, Golang).
- An URL shortener (code deployed at short.balint.dev) designed to grow to global scale (Golang, Terraform, GCP).
Honours and awards
University
- 2nd place, Catalysts Coding Contest Cluj, 2018
- Participation, KPI-Open Kyiv, 2017
- Silver Medal, South-Eastern Mathematical Olympiad for University Students, 2014
- Silver Medal, Ariel International Mathematics Contest, 2014
- 2nd place, "Traian Lalescu" national Mathematics contest, 2013
- Silver Medal, South-Eastern Mathematical Olympiad for University Students, 2013
- Silver Medal, Ariel International Mathematics Contest, 2013
Highschool
- 1st place, Olympiad of Mathematics, County phase, 2012
- Bronze medal, Olympiad of Mathematics, National phase, 2011
- 1st place, Olympiad of Mathematics, County phase, 2011
- 2nd place, Olympiad of Physics, County phase, 2011
- Multiple 1st place prizes at regional (Transylvania) Mathematics contests
Hobbies
In my free time, I sometimes do programming for learning, fun or as a mental challenge. I read books and listen to audio books & podcasts to maximize my learning time. I also don't shy away from other mental challenges such as chess.
I like to keep myself healthy and in shape. I engage in physical activities like weight training, running, and hiking. I also read about nutrition and implement it by eating healthy.
If I want to just relax, I listen to music or watch a football match (ideally high level, i.e. UCL
/
World Cup) on TV.
More recently, I've been getting into digital photography as a creative hobby.
This also makes me go to the Swiss Alps more often.
Contact
https://www.facebook.com/florin.balint.37
https://www.linkedin.com/in/florin-balint-9939ab99
https://github.com/templateflip