BEN ZHOU

UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO COMPUTER ENGINEERING

I built and designed this website without GPT or any previously built components using Next.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind!

Feel free to contact me at ben.zhou@uwaterloo.ca or on LinkedIn!

1B Computer Engineering Student

ABOUT ME

Hey — I'm Ben, a first‑year Computer Engineering student at the University of Waterloo. I love turning ideas into practical software and hardware that make everyday life a little easier.

I work mostly in TypeScript, JavaScript, C++, and Python, and I've shipped full‑stack projects with frameworks like Next.js and Flask. Hackathons have taught me to build, break, and ship fast — skills I bring to every project.

The inside of a macroboard I completely designed and built

Jan 2025 - Apr 2025
Software Engineering Intern
Fuego.io - San Francisco, California
• Optimized core AI generation features by developing custom architecture, accelerating response times to be 17.7x faster (15.4s → 0.87s avg), reducing token usage and slashing costs by similar margins
May 2025 - Present
Software Developer
WAT.ai - AI Sentiment Pulse - Waterloo, Ontario
• Created a webscraper using Python to extract and score 100+ articles on Yahoo News for overall sentiments
Sep 2024 - Present
Firmware Team Member
Midnight Sun - Waterloo, Ontario
• Developing ping testing functions in Python and C to verify connectivity across CAN networks
Jul 2024 - Aug 2024
Prototype Engineering Intern
Averroes Technologies - Toronto, Ontario
• Developed 12 firmware prototypes in C++ for iterative product validation
Feb 2024 - Jul 2024
Software Developer Co-op Student
SAP - Toronto, Ontario
• Created a worker to handle and sanitize GPT-4o requests using TypeScript reducing request errors by 23%
Nov 2023 - May 2024
FullStack Developer Lead
EurekaHacks 2024 - Oakville, Ontario
• Improved page load times by 160%, and reduced LCP, leading to 3,800+ impressions and 1,100+ clicks