Wei Gao

Experience

BlackRock: Vice President, Senior Software Engineer

June 2022 - Present Singapore

Highlights

I am part of BlackRock's Aladdin Wealth Tech that builds a modular-based, config-driven financial application. I lead a front-end feature pillar that unlocks new product ground for our app suite.

• Lead engineer for a feature pillar: As front-end lead and a main stakeholder of my feature, I drive product development, suggest best practices in building web applications, and clarify technical features and constraints to ensure that the tech designs are feasible across domains. I coordinate sprint planning and technical discussions while being one of the main developers on the project.
• Senior engineer across pillars: As a senior engineer 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 context behind the asks and use such information to guide my tech choices. When making tech decisions, I prioritize reliability and efficiency in production runtime. I prefer simple and readable code over “smart” code. And I keep my work well-documented to ensure efficiency and transparency in remote and cross time zone collaboration.
• Educate stakeholders: I periodically conduct sharing on web technologies. I help designers and PMs understand web browsers as their “design material” and the strengths and limitations of the technologies we use.
• Foster learning spirits: 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

Highlights

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 contributed to the team's growth, particularly in fostering a culture of knowledge-sharing. Later as web platform engineer, I work on cross-team projects that are central to Shopee's web front end engineering.

• Adopted Shopee PC for tablets: I 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: I built inaugural versions of Shopee's web apps that grew into the app we see today. Worked on both app 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 saw 85 occurrences and over 100 talks over two years. It was a beloved casual event for the team and a mini enterprise on its own.

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

Community Engagements

I'm an active participant in the local tech scene, focused on promoting knowledge sharing and guiding students in their tech career pursuits.

• UWS STEM Fest 2023 Nov 2023

  Joined as panelist to share my experience as a Senior Software Engineer at BlackRock.

• NUS Hack’n’Roll, Friday Hacks, etc. 2020 - Present

  Joining Hack'n'Roll as judge from 2020. Conducted various sharing in their Friday Hacks events and other course sessions.

• JSConf China Oct 2019

  Keynote speaker of day 2, giving talk “Learn as I Write the Docs”

• Docusaurus 2019

  One of the three main maintainers of Docusaurus.

• Various meetups, conferences 2018-2019

  Gave talks/workshops/lightning talks in various events such as SingaporeCSS, SingaporeJS, JuniorDevSG events, JSConf Budapest, etc.

• React Redux Oct-Dec 2018

  Contributor of React Redux, main author of its documentation for v6.