TO: Dr. Katherine Musick, Instructor
FROM: Alex Whitlock, Student
DATE: September 23, 2024
SUBJECT: Project 1 Analysis
Introduction
The role as a Software Engineer for TikTok's Recommendation Infrastructure is a highly technical role that requires extensive knowledge in distributed systems and the desire to solve hard problems and explore deeply into new technologies. I tailored my cover letter to cover my experience with distributed systems and high-performance computing frameworks, as well as my passion for machine learning and big data. I also highlighted my experience with cloud platforms like GCP and AWS, which are essential for a role at TikTok.
Supporting documents
In my supporting documents for this application, alongside my cover letter and resume, I included links to two github projects I worked on with extensive documentation, and several blog posts to illustrate my capacity to dig deep into technical topics and communicate effectively about them. I chose the two projects because TikTok's Recommendation Infrastruture is heavily dependent on machine learning. The algorithms that drive TikTok are based on recommendation systems that analyze user behavior and preferences to deliver personalized content. My projects demonstrate my ability to work with machine learning models and reflect important information to the users about the models. Both projects show very different use cases for machine learning and I feel the depth of my work adds to my technical skillsfor machine learning and I feel the depth of my work adds to my technical skills and increases my relevance to the role. Attached below are my supporting document links:
Automatic Water Quality Detection
Feedback
The main feedback I asked for and recieved was to add a blur of some sort behind my text to have the visual floating lines not detract from the content on the page. I was told that the lines were a nice touch but could distract so I implemented the blur effect behind them to maintain the visual interest without taking away from the content.
Challenges
Additionally, I chose to implement the entire project with entirely code so it was a bit of a learning curve to get everything up and running. I just had to put in the extra time to learn the technologies so I could implement the project in the way I wanted to while meeting the project requirments. I realize I probably put a lot more time into the project to get a result less than what I could have gotten with a website builder approach, but I think the experience of learning the technologies and implementing the project in a way that I wanted to was worth it.