Karen Liu

I'm a software engineer with 15+ years of industry experience in front-end web development. My passion is creating beautiful, easy-to-use, reliable interfaces for a variety of industries and applications. Thanks for visiting!

Work Experience

CloudKitchens

Feb 2021 - Apr 2024

This startup is still in stealth mode. I hope to share more details soon!

Zenrez

May 2016 - Dec 2017, Apr 2018 - May 2020

This startup partnered with boutique fitness studios to dynamically price classes and target custom membership offers to their clients.
  • Architected web front-ends including online booking and newsfeed platform for fitness studios, CRM, targeted email marketing landing pages, and business dashboard
  • Implemented purchase flow within iframe to allow users to book via Zenrez without leaving the studio website, which enabled the design of a custom pricing algorithm developed at Harvard Business School, increasing average studio revenue by 13%
  • Established eng team processes such as linting, testing, deploying, URL routing, data fetching/caching, analytics tracking, error tracking, bundle late-loading
  • Prototyped Android (React Native) white-labeled studio app

Patreon

Dec 2014 - Mar 2016

  • Led the patron-focused pillar to build features for patreon.com, such as notifications, post comments, search, referral program, message inbox
  • Designed a front-end auto-deploy process and created a Chrome extension to aid in debugging production-only issues
  • Implemented framework for automated tests including end-to-end smoke tests

Square

May 2012 - Aug 2014

  • Part of founding team of Square Payroll
  • Tech lead for team of five engineers building redesigned merchant dashboard
  • Built purchase flow for "business in a box" hardware

Google

Jul 2010 - May 2012

  • Built framework and features for the G+ photo viewer (lightbox)
  • Built G+ photos settings front-end
  • Led implementation of G+ photos pages redesign (as part of new cohesive Google design)

Contract Positions

Empower

August 2020 - December 2020

  • Built features for the relational organizing mobile app, enabling volunteers to reach out to their personal connections and potential voters (React Native)

Exponent (now Expo)

Jun 2016 - Jul 2016

  • Implemented the redesign of XDE, a Mac developer tool for building and sharing React Native projects

Internships

Amazon

May 2009 - June 2009

  • Analyzed customers in various cohort arrangements to understand usage of the Customer Discussions feature

Oracle

May 2009 - June 2009

  • Features and bug fixes for the Oracle Beehive product

Tools

Languages

JavaScript/TypeScript, Ruby, Python, Java

JavaScript frameworks and libraries

React, single-spa, Apollo GraphQL, Redux, React Native, Webpack, Node, Cypress/Karma/Jasmine/Mocha

Education

Carnegie Mellon University

  • 2006 - 2010
  • B.S. in Computer Science, minor in math
  • GPA: 3.84

Stuyvesant High School

  • 2002 - 2006
  • GPA: 95%

Fun Personal Stuff

Project Links
Pipe Dream clone source code
Slider puzzle solver source code
Vegetarianism slideshow source code
Flickr lightbox source code
Secret Santa source code
Whack-a-mole mobile game source code