Tristan Koster

Houston, TX 77096 · (713)-858-7893 · tkoster123@gmail.com

Howdy! I am recent graduate from Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Engineering*. I have prior software engineering experience and knowledge in several programming languages and frameworks. I am currently looking for a new grad role in either software engineering or data analyst. I am open to most fields in software engineering as I am able to ramp up and excited to learn about new technologies! My resume is listed below, but feel free to explore this page as I expand more on my skills, experience, and interests!

*Interdisciplinary Engineering is an ABET-accredited engineering major offered by Texas A&M that allows the student to combine multiple disciplines and craft their own degree plan based on their interests. In my case, I have created a degree plan focused on both Computer Science and Statistics.

Experience

Software Developer Engineer Intern

Amazon Lab126

This was my second internship with Amazon Lab126. My project involved updating an existing internal tool to support several new features developed by the team. Like my first internship, the general goals were given, but the design of the implementation itself was my resposibility. The project was primarily done using JavaScript, HTML and CSS, but I was still actively involved in maintaining backened properties using ROS and C++. The tool is actively used by everyone in the organization, so the new features that I added in exponentially increased developer productivity when it comes to debugging mobility actions for ASTRO.

June 2022 - August 2022

DEP Software Developer Engineer Intern

Amazon Lab126

This was my first internship for Amazon for the Developing Engineers Program. I spent 12 weeks working on a full-stack internal tool for one of the many teams that helped develop the ASTRO robot. While the general idea of the project was given to me, it was my responsibility to design its actual implementation and I ensured the design's approval with my team. The project revolved around developing a layer above an existing pipeline to automate parameter tuning. The whole project, with guidance from my mentor, was designed and implemented to completion by me using Python and Flask on the backend and HTML5 and CSS for the front-end portion. The project was able to cut down time for developers on my team from manually making adjustments to existing functions, increasing team efficiency overall.

June 2021 - August 2021

Teacher Assistant

Texas A&M University

I was the teacher's assistant for an introduction to python course required for all engineering students. Responsibilities included answering questions asked by students during lectures, hosting office hours, proctoring tests, and grading exams/assignments. Since this class was required for all engineers, there are usually a large proportion of students with no prior coding experience. After a semester of helping out ~300 college freshmen, the class average was a few points higher than other sections and from past years according to the professor.

August 2020 - December 2020

Lead Tutor

Code Ninjas West Katy

I was the head tutor for Code Ninjas during their summer sessions. Code Ninjas is a tutor/campsite for teaching kids (ages 5-12) how to code and other technical skills. Camps include teaching scratch to create simple games, basic website creation in HTML and CSS, and 3D modeling for printing and to import into Minecraft. It was my responsibility to create the curriculum for these camps, teach the material, and make sure all the kids are having fun! I received consistently good feedback from owners, parents, and the kids themselves and I had a blast doing this!

May 2020 - August 2020

Projects

Meal Planner

My main goal for this project was to learn a new tech stack, specifically one for web development. I decided to go with the MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.JS) stack to create a tool for family and myself. Features include a website to create an account or login with each user have their own mongodb collection to store recipes. Once a week, scripts would run in the backend to collect an arbitrary amount of recipes in each user's collection, compile the ingredients into one master list, and then text the list to each user using the Twilio API. Basic Functionality is completed with polishing still in progress.

Library Tool Natural Language Processing Research

The main goal of this project was to explore various NLP techniques to find a way to accurately label research papers between basic and applied approaches. I paired with one other Texas A&M Student and faculty from the university libraries to find potential solutions. The process involved looking at several avenues such as word clouds and neural networks. The project was done using python, google collab, and Excel. We had around 100 pre-labeled research abstracts to be used as training data for whichever model we wanted to use. After using the Google-developed model, BERT, we were able to obtain 90% validation accuracy on our larger data set of over a thousand research papers. Our own research paper was created out of this project and can be looked at below as well as the GitHub.

Major League Baseball Expoloratory Data Analysis

As a baseball and statistics fan, I wanted to combine the two passions into one project. This involved making my own data analysis from a data set of the 2019 MLB season on pitching metrics. Python and Kaggle were used for this project and involved some pre-processing to make any good analysis. Since I had a large data set to play with, I could make this project about anything, so I wanted to confirm common assumptions on pitch location and type and compare the at-bat outcomes. I created numerous visualizations and statistical inferences to back up my statements. The link to the Kaggle notebook is listed below.

Cache Simulator

This was the final project for my computer organization course. The goal was to create a simulator for how a computer cache operates. The simulator accounts for common cache attributes such as block size, associativity, tag bits, set bits, block bits, replacement policy(Random Replacement, LRU, LFU), hit policy(write-back and write-through), and miss policy(write-allocate, no write-allocate). The project was completed in Python. I was responsible for all of the design and worked with one other student on implementation. The GitFront is listed below.

Education

Texas A&M University

Bachelor of Science
Interdisciplinary Engineering (Computer Science and Statistics)

GPR: 3.48

Minor in Computer Science

Relevant Coursework: Data Structures and Algorithms, Design/Analysis of Algorithms, Statisical Methods, Computer Organization, Programming Languages, Discrete Computing, Foundation of Statistics 1 & 2

August 2019 - May 2023

Skills

Listed as tiers in order of proficiency and experience:

  • Python3, Flask, Javascript, React, Node.JS, HTML5, CSS
  • Excel, SQL, Java, R, YAML
  • Jupyter Notebook/Google Collab
  • , Haskell

All of the skills listed are ones that I can quickly ramp up for and use productively. I am also a fast learner, so if a required language/framework is not on here, I can learn and use it in a short period as well!

Interests

Outside of software, I am an avid sports fan, especially baseball! Following players and their performances were a major inspiration for me to get into statistics and data as a whole. I enjoy playing sports recreationally including baseball, football, basketball, and lacrosse. I just like to be as active as possible whenever I can, so I always love to try new things!

On a rainy day, I enjoy watching new TV shows, especially dramas and action-related ones on most streaming platforms. I'm also a guitar and harmonica player who likes to play classic rock and folk!