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Hi, I’m Alex Chao, a senior frontend software engineer with 10+ years of experience building fast, data-intensive web apps. I specialize in React and TypeScript, GraphQL, and scalable UI systems, delivering interfaces that turn large datasets into clear, actionable views for developers and product teams. I’ve owned critical product UI areas end-to-end, from 0→1 architecture through production launch, partnering closely with backend engineers and product partners to ship iteratively. I actively embrace AI-driven development workflows (Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate delivery, explore edge cases, and improve product capabilities. I’m genuinely excited about Chainguard's mission to secure the software supply chain and look forward to contributing to foundational infrastructure work that matters for every engineer relying on open-source software.…Hi, I’m Alex Chao, a senior frontend software engineer with 10+ years of experience building fast, data-intensive web apps. I specialize in React and TypeScript, GraphQL, and scalable UI systems, delivering interfaces that turn large datasets into clear, actionable views for developers and product teams. I’ve owned critical product UI areas end-to-end, from 0→1 architecture through production launch, partnering closely with backend engineers and product partners to ship iteratively. I actively embrace AI-driven development workflows (Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate delivery, explore edge cases, and improve product capabilities. I’m genuinely excited about Chainguard's mission to secure the software supply chain and look forward to contributing to foundational infrastructure work that matters for every engineer relying on open-source software.

Alex Chao

Front-End Developer, Full Stack Developer, Web Developer, +2

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Hi, I’m Alex Chao, a senior frontend software engineer with 10+ years of experience building fast, data-intensive web apps. I specialize in React and TypeScript, GraphQL, and scalable UI systems, delivering interfaces that turn large datasets into clear, actionable views for developers and product teams. I’ve owned critical product UI areas end-to-end, from 0→1 architecture through production launch, partnering closely with backend engineers and product partners to ship iteratively. I actively embrace AI-driven development workflows (Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate delivery, explore edge cases, and improve product capabilities. I’m genuinely excited about Chainguard's mission to secure the software supply chain and look forward to contributing to foundational infrastructure work that matters for every engineer relying on open-source software.…Hi, I’m Alex Chao, a senior frontend software engineer with 10+ years of experience building fast, data-intensive web apps. I specialize in React and TypeScript, GraphQL, and scalable UI systems, delivering interfaces that turn large datasets into clear, actionable views for developers and product teams. I’ve owned critical product UI areas end-to-end, from 0→1 architecture through production launch, partnering closely with backend engineers and product partners to ship iteratively. I actively embrace AI-driven development workflows (Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate delivery, explore edge cases, and improve product capabilities. I’m genuinely excited about Chainguard's mission to secure the software supply chain and look forward to contributing to foundational infrastructure work that matters for every engineer relying on open-source software.

Available to hire

Hi, I’m Alex Chao, a senior frontend software engineer with 10+ years of experience building fast, data-intensive web apps. I specialize in React and TypeScript, GraphQL, and scalable UI systems, delivering interfaces that turn large datasets into clear, actionable views for developers and product teams. I’ve owned critical product UI areas end-to-end, from 0→1 architecture through production launch, partnering closely with backend engineers and product partners to ship iteratively.

I actively embrace AI-driven development workflows (Claude, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) to accelerate delivery, explore edge cases, and improve product capabilities. I’m genuinely excited about Chainguard’s mission to secure the software supply chain and look forward to contributing to foundational infrastructure work that matters for every engineer relying on open-source software.

Skills

Experience Level

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Expert

Intermediate

Work Experience

Founding Engineer / Lead Software Engineer at Exa (exa.ai)

December 1, 2024 - March 1, 2026

Owned and built critical product UI areas end-to-end from 0→1, taking problems from ambiguous requirements through architecture, implementation, iteration, and production launch. Built high-performance React/TypeScript interfaces handling large-scale data, implemented virtualization, efficient data fetching with TanStack Query, memoization, and selective re-render optimization to stay fast under heavy data loads. Designed GraphQL frontend layers with typed queries/mutations, DataLoader-style N+1 elimination, and fragment-based data colocation. Built a Material UI–equivalent design system with tokens and accessible components, and optimized bundle size and runtime performance. Integrated AI-driven features using OpenAI/Anthropic APIs and implemented streaming UI patterns. Collaborated with backend engineers and product partners to define GraphQL contracts and ship features, and contributed to frontend deployment, observability, and CI/CD.

Senior Software Engineer at Amazon Ads

July 1, 2022 - October 1, 2024

Built and owned high-performance frontend features on a data-heavy SaaS platform serving millions of daily users. Implemented React/TypeScript interfaces for large-scale advertising data, including catalog browsing, dependency graphs, and historical comparisons. Developed GraphQL frontend integration with typed query patterns and optimized N+1 resolution with DataLoader. Contributed to a consistent component system and design tokens across surfaces, and led Core Web Vitals improvements by profiling render trees, implementing virtualization, and stabilizing layouts with async data. Applied advanced TypeScript to reduce runtime failures and foster compile-time correctness, and leaned on AI-assisted workflows to accelerate delivery.

Senior Software Engineer at The New York Times

July 1, 2020 - July 1, 2022

Led frontend modernization efforts for data-heavy content management tooling, migrating legacy interfaces to a modern React/TypeScript stack with a Material UI-like design system, GraphQL data fetching, typed component libraries, and automated Jest coverage adopted across teams. Built GraphQL integration layers, implemented virtualization for large catalogs, and optimized bundle sizes to keep UIs responsive. Mentored junior engineers on performance optimization, TypeScript discipline, and AI-assisted development workflows.

Software Engineer at Codesmith

December 1, 2018 - June 1, 2020

Built a full-stack data-intensive SaaS product from scratch — high-performance React/TypeScript frontend surfaces with virtualized rendering, GraphQL API integration with typed query patterns, Material UI-equivalent component libraries, and comprehensive Jest/RTL test coverage. Contributed to 0→1 product development decisions around state management, data fetching, and component structure, laying the engineering foundation for the product. Implemented code splitting, lazy loading, and bundle-size reductions to achieve fast Time to Interactive on critical interfaces.

Junior Web Developer at GraphQuill

August 1, 2016 - November 1, 2018

Built JavaScript/HTML5/CSS3 React interfaces connected to Node.js/Express REST backends. Contributed reusable components, consumed REST content APIs, and wrote SQL queries. Gained experience with Git workflows, Agile ceremonies, and collaborative startup engineering practices.