Hi, I'm Ilan.
ilanbigio@gmail.com
I graduated from Brown University, spent 3 years at Google, and am currently working at OpenAI. I have a passion for teaching and learning, and spend an astounding amount of time on my pet projects.
Projects
Messing with Lyft Bikes
I reverse engineered Lyft Bikes API to add remote-unlock functionality, and in the process discovered (and disclosed) a vulnerability.
AI Shell Assistant![]()
A delightfully minimal, yet remarkably powerful AI Shell Assistant.
Course Registration Tool
SMS-based service that allowed students to request to be notified when a spot opens up in a capped class.
Deterministic Minesweeper
Version of Minesweeper that only generates maps that can be solved without guessing. (You can play it!)
Grading Infrastructure
I designed and built a generic auto-grading system for a new course at Brown, along with a continuous development infrastructure.
Liar's Dice AI
Bayesian agent capable of beating humans in the game of Liar's Dice. It was later used to train a deep reinforcement learning model.
Mastermind AI
Near-optimal agent optimized to play and win faster than humans. Ported from Python to Golang to leverage goroutine parallelism.
Personal Website
I designed and built this personal website, and set up a static deployment strategy on Github Pages using git subtrees.
Text to Messenger Tool
Nifty tool that forwards SMS to my Messenger so I could receieve 2FA texts while away from the US.
Weenix OS
Unix-like operating system with processes, threads, device drivers, a virtual filesystem, S5FS, and virtual memory management.
Experience
Head Teaching Assistant & SysAdmin @ Brown
- Trained and managed a staff of 40 for Computer Systems, a class of 350 students, with a focus in scripting.
- Responsible for helping students debug 4hrs/wk, and spent over 30hrs grading over 50 project submissions.
- Administered departmental system for Brown CS, managing permissions, accounts, file systems, and networks.
Software Engineer @ Google![]()
- Built and launched dozens of early features for YouTube Shorts, working fullstack (iOS & Android, C++ server).
- Contributed to a multi-quarter migration by designing new hybrid fullscreen mode for the Shorts Player.
- Wrote metrics framework in Go to analyze user sessions and present results of a major feature launch to VPs.
- Distilled 100+ pages of docs into single team launch checklist, significantly reducing onboarding friction.
Intern @ Twitter
- Led team of 12 in a customer-facing redesign to Twitter Developer Portal, revamping dashboard billing flow.
- Held inception meeting with 15 engineers, producing 40 tickets, and then wrote 16 page technical design doc.
- Proposed and wrote Python script to modularize hundreds of tests, cutting review times from days to minutes.
© 2023 Ilan Bigio