About

Will Zhou is an experienced software engineer and manager with expertise in backend system design and implementation. He is currently working as an Engineering Manager at SmartNews, overseeing data engineering and full-stack development. Prior to his current role, Will worked as a Software Engineer at SmartNews, where he was responsible for the health, reliability, and codebase of all backend systems that serve ads to the SmartNews application. This included the AdServer written in Java/Kotlin, caching layer, log-gathering applications, and real-time and offline analysis in EMR/Hive/Hadoop. Before joining SmartNews, Will worked as a Software Development Engineer at Amazon, where he was part of the Shopping Innovations team. His responsibilities included building features across the Amazon retail website, such as "Top Preordered Products" and "Search with Similar Keywords", with a focus on recommending interesting, high-performing, relevant products to customers. He was responsible for the back-to-front data sourcing, assembly, generation, content serving, and front-end design of these features, using SQL, Python, Java, Kotlin, and Spring/JS in the frontend. Will holds a Bachelor's Degree in Game Design, with a double major in Computer Science from New York University. He also studied Finance, General at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. Additionally, he completed a CET Intensive Japanese Language & Culture Study Abroad program, where he studied Japanese Studies. Will's technical skills include Senior Software Engineering, Software Engineering, Backend, Data Engineering, Java, Kotlin, Hadoop, SQL, Frontend, Apache Hive, Spring, and Search. Overall, he has 6.11 years of relevant experience in the field.