Wei Gao

Experience

BlackRock: Vice President, Senior Software Engineer

June 2022 - Present Singapore

As a Senior Engineer at Aladdin Wealth Tech, I help build its client front end, enabling our clients with web apps of good UI. I also help foster learning spirits by running our team's weekly sharing session across a few sub-teams.

As a tech lead and a key stakeholder of one of the product pillars, I help coordinate sprint planning, conduct regular discussions and catch-up meetings, supervise tech design and conduct pair coding and code reviews with my team members.

Highlights

• Tech lead for a feature pillar: I help drive product development, suggest best practices in delivering web applications, and outline technical features and limitations. To bring designs to live, I ensure that front-end and back-end developers understand the technical capabilities and limitations of both sides and help drive the best solution to meet the product and design requirements. I lead sprint planning to ensure the delivery teams are fully optimised. Mentor junior developers in their tech designs.
• Senior engineer across pillars: I work on features across our application and am an active owner of our codebase by contribution and code review. When working on a feature, I try to understand the motivation and the contexts behind the Ask and use such information to guide my tech choices. When making tech decisions, I prioritize reliability and efficiency in production runtime. And I prefer simple and readable code over “smart” code. I keep my work well-documented to ensure efficiency and transparency in remote and cross time zone collaboration.
• Educate stakeholders: I periodically conduct forums on web technologies, their features and limitations. Help Designers understand web browsers as their “design material”.
• Foster learning culture: I host our weekly Studies sessions across multiple teams, where engineers come in a casual gathering to share their insights learnt from the past week.

Shopee: Senior Software Engineer

Nov 2016 - June 2022 Singapore

As one of the initial members of the WebFE team, I developed the inaugural versions of Shopee's web applications for both PC and mobile. As the team evolved, I also contributed to the team's growth, particularly in fostering a culture of knowledge-sharing.

Highlights

• Browser stats dashboard: Established the Google Analytics dashboard for WebFE team, enabling the team to gain insights into users' web browsing statitics, and to guide decisions on browser support.
• Adopting Shopee PC for tablets: Led a cross-team project to adapt Shopee's PC site for tablets, introducing UI improvements like swipe gestures and accessibility features, while advising Designers and Product Managers on web technology best practices.
• Built Shopee web app from ground up: Built inaugural versions of Shopee's web apps, covering features including Home Page, Product Details Page, Recommendations, Item Cards, etc. that grew into the app we see today. Worked on both features and platform tasks as the team grew, and eventually joined Platform Team to focus on common parts of the apps.
• Proud creator of “RK”: Started and co-organized internal sharing series “React Knowledgeable” for our React teams. The series sees 85 occurrences and over 100 talks delivered over two years. It was a beloved casual event for the team every week.

Earlier experiences

Web Developer, Didi June 2015 - Oct 2016, Beijing

Management Trainee, Lenovo Apr 2013 - Apr 2015, Beijing

Lecturer (Part-Time), New Oriental School Sept 2012 - Mar 2014, Beijing

Personal projects

• Square a Cat https://wgao19.github.io/square-a-cat/ (best with mobile)
  Square a Cat gives your photos back in Instagram squares with a background color of your choice. Co-created with ChatGPT.
• Fluffy Philharmonic https://fluffyphil.org/
  Stories about a group of fluffy musicians and a sticker shop. In collaboration with Chen Hui Jing.