MSCS-AI @ USC | Backend / AI Engineering | Los Angeles, CA

rayzhang418@gmail.com• LinkedIn • Resume

• Build production-grade backend systems and data / AI pipelines.
• Have hands-on exposure across AI, ML, and NLP, with experience applying models to real-world problems.
• Focus on LLM-assisted applications, information extraction, and data-driven system design.
• Comfortable owning projects end-to-end: data ingestion → processing → APIs → evaluation.

I aim for breadth with solid fundamentals, and continue deepening selected areas through active projects.

Status: ✅ Complete

A backend-focused system for analyzing after-hours earnings events and surfacing structured, high-signal opportunities.

• Parses and structures earnings-related financial data
• Combines market context with deterministic, rule-based scoring
• Fully automated and production-ready pipeline

Progress: ████████████████████ 100%

▶ Next phase: AI-based signal enhancement (short-horizon prediction)

Tech stack: Python, FastAPI, Selenium, Pandas, custom parsers

⚠️ Note: Raylytics is a personal project involving proprietary logic and trading-related insights.
To protect intellectual property, the source code and core implementation are not publicly accessible.

Status: 🔄 Active

An ML/DL system predicting short-term market direction using financial news, price dynamics, and earnings signals.

• Data sourcing, feature engineering, and problem formulation underway
• Combining textual signals, market data, and event-driven information
• Building toward an end-to-end trainable model

Progress: ████████████░░░░░░░░ 60%

Status: ⏸ Paused

A collaborative AI-assisted system for interpretable resume-to-JD matching with sentence-level evidence.

• Extracts structured requirements from job descriptions
• Embeds resume and JD content to compute semantic similarity
• Returns matched sentence-level evidence to support scoring transparency

Progress: On hold — development temporarily paused.

Tech stack: Python, Sentence-Transformers, KeyBERT, FastAPI

Repo: https://github.com/Hermit888/Job-Matcher

I have built a strong foundation across artificial intelligence, machine learning, web systems, and software engineering through coursework at USC and SJSU.

• Foundations of Artificial Intelligence (CSCI-561, USC) – Search, planning, knowledge representation, and classical AI problem-solving algorithms.
• Machine Learning (CSCI-567, USC) – Supervised and unsupervised learning, model evaluation, neural networks, decision trees, and practical algorithm implementation.
• Deep Learning and Its Applications (CSCI-566, USC) – Neural networks and deep learning concepts with applications in computer vision and natural language processing.
• Web Technologies (CSCI-571, USC) – Core web concepts underlying modern web systems, including protocols, servers, and rich interaction components.
• Systems & Software Engineering (SJSU) – Software lifecycle, design patterns, version control, testing, and debugging in medium-to-large scale applications.
• Data Structures & Algorithms (SJSU) – Fundamental algorithms, complexity analysis, and data organization essential for performant code.

These courses equipped me with both theoretical understanding and practical experience in software design, data processing, and AI/ML foundations.