Senior AI / Full-Stack Software Engineer
Open To Work
WANCHEN YAO
IBM
Chicago,IL
Work Preference
Job Search Status:
Open to work
Desired start date:
Immediately
Desired Job Title
Full Stack Software DeveloperFront End DeveloperBackend Developer
Work Type
Full TimePart TimeContract Work
Location Preference
Remote
Minimum Desired Compensation
$50/hr
10
Years of experience
2
years of post-secondary education
Senior Al and full-stack software engineer with 10 years of professional software engineering experience delivering secure, cloud-native products across finance, fintech, healthcare, and logistics. Deep expertise in Java 17, Spring Boot, Kotlin, Python, FastAPI, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, and Next.js, with hands-on ownership of Generative AI, LLM, RAG, NLP, Al chatbot, and agentic applications. AWS- and Azure-certified architect experienced in scalable APIs, SQL and NoSQL data platforms, vector databases, infrastructure automation, observability, technical leadership, and production operations.
Work History
3 Years 10 Months
09.2022 - 07.2026
3 Years 10 Months
Senior Software Engineer, Al & Cloud Applications
IBM | Chicago, IL
09.2022 - 07.2026
- Architected a multi-tenant Generative AI knowledge assistant for finance operations using Java 17, Spring Boot, Python, FastAPI, Azure OpenAI, LangChain, and RAG, reducing policy and case-research time by 62% for more than 1,800 users.
- Led AI Agent Development and AI Integration for an LLM-powered AI chatbot and Voice Agent, using LangGraph for tool orchestration, NLP-based intent routing, grounded-answer evaluation, and human escalation; improved answer accuracy to 88% and deflected 35% of routine support requests.
- Built secure REST and event-driven services with Spring Boot, Kotlin, JPA/Hibernate, Kafka, OAuth 2.0/OIDC, PostgreSQL, Redis, Neo4j, and Pinecone; evaluated Qdrant and other vector databases for hybrid retrieval, metadata filtering, and cost-performance tradeoffs.
- Delivered full-stack web development with TypeScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, and NestJS, including streaming LLM responses, role-based workspaces, source citations, and administrative analytics; maintained automated coverage with JUnit 5, Testcontainers, Jest, and Playwright.
- Designed AWS and Azure deployment patterns using ECS, EKS, S3, Lambda, Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, Key Vault, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, and GitHub Actions. Established IAM controls, distributed tracing, dashboards, SLOs, and incident runbooks that supported 99.95% availability while mentoring six engineers and leading architecture and code reviews.
2 Years 7 Months
01.2020 - 08.2022
2 Years 7 Months
Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer
Devsu | Remote
01.2020 - 08.2022
- Led a six-person engineering pod delivering healthcare and logistics platforms with Java, Spring Boot, Kotlin, Python, Node.js, NestJS, React, Next.js, and Angular, coordinating architecture, delivery risks, code reviews, and releases with product and client stakeholders.
- Designed logistics APIs and Kafka-based workflows that processed more than 25 million shipment and tracking events per month; optimized PostgreSQL indexes, Redis caching, and asynchronous processing to lower p95 response time by 48%.
- Built a HIPAA-aligned healthcare portal using TypeScript, React, Next.js, Spring Security, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB, implementing audit trails, encryption, least-privilege access, and automated Cypress tests while increasing monthly deployment frequency from two to twelve releases.
- Deployed a Machine Learning and NLP classification service with Python, FastAPI, Django administration, and AWS SageMaker, improving document-routing accuracy from 76% to 91% and reducing manual triage by approximately 1,100 hours annually.
- Automated AWS infrastructure with Terraform across VPC, ECS, RDS, S3, CloudFront, CloudWatch, IAM, and Secrets Manager; introduced autoscaling and storage lifecycle policies that reduced annual cloud costs by 24% while maintaining 99.9% availability.
1 Year 5 Months
07.2018 - 12.2019
1 Year 5 Months
Software Engineer
Innovacio Technologies | Remote
07.2018 - 12.2019
- Developed finance and fintech reconciliation services with Java, Spring Boot, C#, .NET Core, and REST APIs, automating settlement matching across more than three million monthly transaction records and reducing reconciliation exceptions by 41%.
- Created a Go (Golang) transaction-ingestion service and optimized SQL procedures, schemas, migrations, and indexes across Oracle and MySQL, increasing batch throughput by 2.3 times without additional infrastructure.
- Modernized customer-facing applications using JavaScript, TypeScript, Vue.js, Angular, Node.js, and Express, introducing reusable components and contract-tested service integrations that reduced frontend defects by 32%.
- Containerized applications with Docker and implemented Jenkins CI/CD, Maven and Gradle builds, JUnit, Mockito, SonarQube quality gates, centralized logging, and production health checks, cutting average release time from four hours to 45 minutes.
2 Years
06.2016 - 06.2018
2 Years
Associate Software Engineer
Innovacio Technologies | Remote
06.2016 - 06.2018
- Built Java and Spring Boot services for customer, billing, and reporting workflows, replacing legacy SOAP integrations with documented REST APIs and reducing partner onboarding time by 30%.
- Developed Python and Django utilities for data validation and operational reporting while contributing JavaScript and Angular features to internal administration applications.
- Modeled relational and NoSQL data in Oracle, MySQL, and MongoDB; wrote SQL migrations, tuned high-volume queries, and introduced Redis caching that reduced report-generation time from 90 seconds to under 20 seconds.
- Expanded automated testing with JUnit, Mockito, Selenium, and integration-test suites, participated in peer reviews and on-call incident response, and helped improve quarterly release success from 85% to 97%.
Education
Bachelor of Science - Computer Science
James Cook University | Singapore | 07.2014 - 05.2016
Skills
Java 17
Spring Boot
Kotlin
Python
FastAPI
Django
C#/.NET
Go/Golang
Certification
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate — Amazon Web Services (May 2021)
- Oracle Certified Professional: Java SE 17 Developer — Oracle(November 2022)
- AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty — Amazon Web Services (September 2024)
- Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate — Microsoft (February 2025)
Timeline
Senior Software Engineer, Al & Cloud Applications
IBM
09.2022 - 07.2026Read more
Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer
Devsu
01.2020 - 08.2022Read more
Software Engineer
Innovacio Technologies
07.2018 - 12.2019Read more
Associate Software Engineer
Innovacio Technologies
06.2016 - 06.2018Read more
James Cook University - Bachelor of Science, Computer Science
07.2014 - 05.2016Read more