Ishaan Patel

I am a student at the University of Waterloo, currently pursuing my Software Engineering Honors degree. I am an aspiring full-time software engineer in the near future. My current position is a software developer at WAT.ai where we are creating a chess engine inspired by deepmind’s AlphaZero reinforcement chess engine. Here I have worked on setting up the base chess environment in Python, and currently am using PyTorch to create a neural network to process game states.

I also have worked at Tampa Events where I created full-stack software from ground up using frontend technologies such as React.js and backend technologies such as Node.js and MySQL. Here, I created a form-builder that helps automate data collection into an already existing customer relations management software, saving 5-10 hours of manual data collection per week.

I have also worked as a remote freelance C# software developer for two individual game development teams, where I worked in teams of highly skilled individuals to create engaging 3D physics based snowboarding and car-racing games.

Another area I have experience in involves android development, where I published android apps to the play Store and have received thousands of downloads.

I have been interested in software development since high school, and I am always eager to learn new technologies for practical agile development and hope to use some of my strong interpersonal skills to work efficiently.

Software Developer Oct. 2020 – Jun. 2022

Tampa Events Inc. (Scrum Agile Development) Tampa, FL

• Developed a drag-and-drop form builder platform using React.js and Node.js for convenient data collection.
• Implemented RESTful APIs with FireBase Authentication using Express.js.
• Reduced manual lead tracking effort by 5-10 hours per week by integrating form builder data collection with customer relations management software using MySQL, AWS S3 and RDS.
• Resulted in a new client interested in using the software, and new customer leads contributing to startup growth.

Software Developer (Core Design Team) Oct. 2022 – Present

WAT.ai - Chess Engine Team - University of Waterloo (Kanban Agile Development) Waterloo, ON

• Developing an artificial intelligence chess engine inspired by DeepMind’s AlphaZero with a team of 6 developers.
• Wrote a Python chess environment, and a PyTorch neural network to assess the win/loss score of any game.

Software Developer Jan. 2020 – Dec. 2020

Software Development Freelancing (Game Programming) Remote

• Delivered 3D snowboarding and car racing games with customizable player physics settings, camera systems, visual effects, and shaders using C#, PBR Graphs, and Unity3D.
• Achieved 25% faster load times by refactoring code for initial object loading with conditional rendering.
• Improved render pipeline performance by 10% by writing conditional render scripts, reducing vertex count by 50%.

University of Waterloo Software Engineering