Ahnaf An Nafee

• Mentor 60+ graduate and undergraduate students in algorithms, systems, and applied machine learning, driving measurable improvements in lab completion and conceptual mastery
• Design coursework, lab exercises, and evaluation rubrics aligned with modern software engineering best practices

• Architected and led a cross-team standardization of Kubernetes/OpenShift deployment dictionaries across 10+ service teams, eliminating configuration conflicts and accelerating developer velocity
• Designed and rolled out Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) policies in OpenShift in partnership with security and infrastructure teams, hardening the platform against privilege-escalation risks
• Automated end-to-end TLS certificate lifecycle management, eliminating manual renewals and reducing certificate-expiration-related downtime by 100%
• Built a Gradle plugin for container image certification that streamlined CI/CD workflows, reduced build-pipeline congestion, and lowered operational expenses by 10% annually
• Championed infrastructure-as-code and observability best practices; partnered with SREs to improve deployment reliability and mean time to recovery (MTTR)

• Owned end-to-end technical strategy, architecture, and execution as CTO; led engineering across backend, frontend, and cloud teams shipping a consumer-facing matchmaking platform
• Spearheaded migration of monolithic backend to a microservices architecture on AWS, cutting application load and cloud spend by 80% through right-sizing, autoscaling, and serverless adoption
• Introduced CI/CD with GitHub Actions and Maven, automating builds, tests, and deployments; reduced manual release effort by 85% and eliminated deploy-day toil
• Recruited, mentored, and led multiple student engineering pods through full microservice design, implementation, and production rollout
• Drove weekly stakeholder syncs, aligning product, design, and engineering on roadmap, scope, and delivery milestones

• Engineered a real-time chat subsystem using STOMP over WebSockets in Java, supporting thousands of concurrent users with low-latency delivery
• Integrated 20+ REST endpoints across third-party and OAuth-based identity providers, enabling secure, scalable authentication and data exchange
• Optimized client-side state management with Redux, cutting chat-service performance bottlenecks by 80%
• Designed data pipelines and APIs powering the matchmaking recommendation engine serving thousands of active users

• Facilitated weekly labs and mentored students in systems engineering, programming fundamentals, and technical project management
• Developed hands-on demonstrations translating abstract computer-science concepts into practical, assessable skills

• Shipped gameplay systems and parameterized shaders for DC's Justice League: Cosmic Chaos (multi-platform console/PC release)
• Built modular game-manager scripts that streamlined designer workflows and accelerated feature iteration
• Partnered with technical artists to create customizable, performance-tuned shaders optimized for runtime rendering
• Executed integration and stress testing via Mantis, delivering actionable, developer-ready bug reports

Advisor: Dr. Craig Yu

Research focus: generative AI for 3D content creation, machine-learning-driven graphics pipelines (UV mapping, non-photorealistic rendering), and human–computer interaction in immersive XR environments

Honors: Dean's List; Founder's Scholarship

Relevant coursework: Algorithms, Operating Systems, Distributed Computing, Computer Graphics, Machine Learning, Software Engineering