Cooper Leong

Senior Software Developer Intern

During my last 4 months at the Centre for Advanced Computing (CAC), I was excited to transition into the role of Senior Software Developer Intern. This allowed me to work as a project lead/manager for a set of new interns starting at the CAC. While working from home, I would delegate tasks, manage releases, provide consultation and meet with the new interns. I was working on one of the largest projects that the CAC had at the time, which meant meetings with the client, product rollout, and conversations about the future of the platform. I learned a great deal from this experience about what it means to be a manager, and how to lead a team in a technical field. Although working from home was a change, it was embraced and we were able to conquer hurdles and overcome obstacles with the same motivation as before.

Filling a management style role at the CAC taught me the importance of having a deep understanding of the technology being used in the platform, and how a great project manager doesn't just tell their team what to do, but works along side them.

Software Developer Intern

I started working at the Centre for Advanced Computing (CAC) as part of my Professional Internship at Queen's. For 12 months, I worked as a Software Developer Intern, using a multitude of technologies for varying projects. The projects at the CAC benefitted from being research oriented, proof-of-concept platforms that emphasized the use of cutting edge technologies. This allowed the freedom for me to learn a great deal about the latest and best-practice tech in the software development field. The largest project I worked on used the MERN Stack (MongoDB, Express, React, NodeJS) to develop the framwork, and then used Docker and Kubernetes to maintain the production environment. I focused mostly on the backend and Kubernetes cluster, as well as the machine learning aspect of the project. Our platform implemented a cutting edge NLP model that was designed almost entirely by our team. This was a fantastic opportunity that I took advantage of to become well versed in container orchestration, the SaaS platform, cloud infrastructure, and NLP. This is where I began to find a passion and interest for DevOps.

I also worked on machine learning specific projects, that introduced me to parallel and cloud computing. Our solution implemented the Dask framework to parallelize the data batches, and the inferenced that segmented data using a trained Tensorflow model served on individual Docker containers in the cloud. This allowed the overall inferencing process to be cut down from days of computational power into minutes. This was a tremendous learning experience for me because I was tasked with being the DevOps lead for the project, and designed the data pipeline and cloud architecture for the inferencing process.

Engineering Co-op, Product Design and Documentation

This was a really unique job opportunity, at a small but mighty engineering company that specialized in high definition pressure sensors, from wearables to airplane tires. I worked on a number of projects within the Research and Development department during my 4 month internship. Projects that used 3D predictive pose modelling, data collection, iOS and Android app wireframing, and server configration and design. Under the mentorship of an expert with a PhD in machine learning, we were able to double the effeciency of the data collection and cleaning process within the first few weeks of starting.

My most rewarding experience was being allowed to be the project lead in designing, configuring, and building a new server for the entire company. I refreshed their derelict server system as well as built and installed a powerful new server to run machine learning computations locally on their network.

I was also asked to join the CEO, CTO, and other project managers in the process of hiring a new IT company, as they valued my opinion regarding server maintenance and support. This was a fantastic first look into the business side of running a company, which I found quite interesting and educational.