Engineer Development

*******@*****.*** vasantkumar.ca

Vasant Kumar

Summary

Able to approach problems with a business, technical, and user experience mindset from time spent on

the business/technology side of an e-commerce website. Strong leadership and interpersonal skills.

Great technical skills: adept at Java, comfortable with Unix, and experienced in other

languages/technologies.

Education

Bachelor of Honours Computer Science University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada 2009

Undergraduate Research: Human Computer Interaction, Advisor: Professor Michael Terry (2009)

Specializations: Software Engineering option, History minor

Activities: Residence Orientation Leader (2006, 2007, 2008)

Professional Experience

Software Development Engineer II, Search Experience Amazon.com, Seattle, WA August, 2009

October, 2011

Received a Just Do It award, the company s highest award, for launching a personal project that

increased revenue by millions of dollars. Was presented by founder/CEO Jeff Bezos in front of several

thousand people at the company all hands.

Scoped, prioritized, and led an international cross team project that was requested by the CEO across

Amazon s search and product pages.

Studied analytics and used A/B testing to regularly evaluate the business/revenue impact of features

on the search page. Strong understanding of usability, search and the e-commerce space.

Engineered a variety of new features on Amazon using languages such as Java and Perl. Emphasis on

scalability and performance. 2 patent applications.

Have mentored/trained new engineers in the US, Japan, and China and have been engaged as the

main point of contact for Amazon search during major site wide events.

HCI Research Assistant University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada January, 2009 April, 2009

Conducted user research via interviews and field studies and developed several prototypes to explore

ways to digitize environmental fieldwork for the Human Computer Interaction department.

Software Development Engineer Intern, Search Experience Amazon.com, Seattle, WA April, 2008

August, 2008

Analyzed customer behavior using Oracle and MySQL and suggested improvements to Amazon s

search page to increase revenue and improve customer experience.

Software Development Engineer Intern Sybase iAnywhere, Waterloo, ON, Canada January, 2007

April, 2007, September, 2007 December, 2007

Helped develop the CSS renderer of a mobile browser and AvantGo, a mobile content synchronization

application, for the Blackberry using Java.

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