Charlotte Kwon

developer · creator · artist

I am an early career engineer with a background in Computer Science and Business from USC, and I love people and love building for them. What motivates me most is watching something I made make a real person's day a little easier.

New York, NY

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About

I am an early career engineer with a degree in Computer Science and Business from USC's Viterbi School of Engineering. Mostly, I love people, and I love building things for them. The part of engineering that pulls me in is not the clever code, it is the moment someone uses what I made and their day gets a little easier. I like owning the whole thing, from the data model all the way to how it feels to press a button, and I care most about problems where real people are stuck. Lately that has looked like a patent search tool for researchers who are not engineers, and a dashboard that helps building owners in New York stay ahead of expensive deadlines. What keeps me going is simple. I want to see the thing I built actually help someone.

Experience

Software Engineer

Patentopia, USC Information Sciences Institute

Jan 2026 to May 2026

Built a full sign up and email verification flow in PHP, using regex and live MX and DNS checks to keep fake .edu accounts out.

Dug through a legacy codebase and fixed the login, SSL, SQL, and patent search problems that were breaking things for real users, and got it dependable again.

Led the move off the retired PatentsView API onto the USPTO Open Data Portal. I documented the auth, rate limits, and schema, and validated everything with Swagger so the switch caused almost no downtime.

PHP
SQL
REST APIs
Swagger
DNS and MX

Product Engineer

USC Annenberg Media, Digital Product Team

Feb 2026 to May 2026

Took the lead on redesigning the front page for web and app, used by more than 350 journalists, digging into traffic data, A/B tests, and reader surveys to find where people were losing interest.

Rebuilt the navigation and layout around how readers actually behave, and lifted traffic to new front page stories by 12 percent.

Ran the roadmap in Jira and turned messy stakeholder feedback into clear specs that kept engineering, design, and editorial moving together.

Product
A/B Testing
Jira
Agile

Projects

ShedClock

NYC Sidewalk Shed Compliance Dashboard

A dashboard that turns confusing New York sidewalk shed permits into plain answers: when your renewal is due, and roughly what missing it could cost you. I pulled in more than 4,300 live Department of Buildings records through a cached API, stitched scattered permit histories into one clear view per site, and tested the penalty math carefully, because getting it wrong would cost someone real money.

Full Stack
Docker
REST API
Testing

Stock Trading Web App

Real time trading platform

A real time trading app built on Java Servlets and Tomcat, with a MySQL database behind portfolios and logins. The front end uses AJAX and jQuery so searching stocks, placing orders, and watching your account update all feel instant.

Java
Servlets
MySQL
AJAX and jQuery

Social Playlist

Data driven social web app

A social web app built with Spring Boot and a REST API, with secure sessions. It includes a similarity scoring system that turns what people share into a simple read on how connected they really are.

Spring Boot
REST
Java

CISCO Personal Data Account

Federated learning · Case Western Reserve

Java modules for a federated learning system that lets people get personalized healthcare without handing over their privacy. I used JDBC for data access and shipped a working prototype for secure patient data sharing, presenting progress every week to faculty and graduate researchers.

Java
JDBC
Federated Learning

Skills

Languages

C++
Python
Java
PHP
JavaScript

Frameworks and Backend

Spring Boot
Java Servlets
Tomcat
JDBC
REST APIs
AJAX / JSON
jQuery

Tools and Cloud

Docker
AWS
Git
SQL
Firebase / Expo
Swagger
Claude Code

Data and Design

Excel
Tableau
AutoCAD
Unity
HTML / CSS

Art

A few of my digital and watercolor pieces. Making art is how I recharge, and it quietly shapes how I think about design in everything else I build.

Beyond the code

When I am not building something, you can usually find me behind a camera, deep in a chess game, or cheering way too loud at just about any sport. I also love making things with my hands and in 3D, from CAD models and prints to paintings.

Photography
Chess
Sports
Digital Art
Watercolor
CAD
3D Printing
VR

Education

University of Southern California

B.S. Computer Science and Business Administration · Viterbi School of Engineering

May 2026

A few classes I loved

Full Stack Web Development
Algorithms
Data Structures and OOD
Software Engineering
Computer and Network Security
Data Analytics
Discrete Mathematics
Business Finance
Operations Management

Leadership and Involvement

Head of Social Events · KSEA (USC)

2024 to 2026

Ran social events across four Southern California chapters and grew our membership by 20 percent, mostly by making events people actually wanted to show up to.

Finance Team Lead · USC Athena Hacks

2024 to 2025

Reached out to more than 200 sponsors and raised $15K for 150 hackers, and cut our projected spending by 60 percent to help dig the org out of five years of debt.

First Section Violinist · USC Student Symphony Orchestra