Galen Zhao
Full-stack engineer · IoT & hardware
I design and ship systems end to end — from schematics and firmware to APIs, mobile apps, and cloud infrastructure. This blog collects notes from production work, experiments, and open-source contributions across software and hardware.
What I work on
Software
- Backend: Node.js, Python, Java, Go, Ruby
- Mobile: iOS (Objective-C / Swift), Android, React Native
- Web: Vue, React, modern JavaScript tooling
- APIs, payments, auth, and integration-heavy products
Infrastructure & operations
- Docker, Nginx / OpenResty, DNS, monitoring, CI/CD
- Linux systems, networking, and performance tuning
- PostgreSQL, MySQL, ETL, and query optimization
Embedded, IoT & hardware
- ESP32 / ESP8266, Arduino, RTOS, sensor networks
- Schematic design, PCB layout, power and signal integrity
- C++, JNI, drivers, and low-level integration
Highlights
End-to-end delivery
One person can take a product from hardware bring-up through backend and client apps.
Physical ↔ digital
Comfortable bridging embedded devices, protocols, and cloud services.
Polyglot engineering
Production experience across many languages and stacks, chosen for the problem.
Systems thinking
Distributed systems, observability, and infrastructure that stays operable.
Open source
Share tools and write-ups so others can reuse what worked in the field.
Automation
Scripts, pipelines, and small services that remove repetitive ops work.
Contact
I like solutions that are simple to operate and honest about trade-offs —
whether the constraint is power draw on a board or latency on a distributed API.