👤
Ali Al Zein
Creative & Free
Posts
Work
Projects
Publications
Education
Contact
Building something new. More details coming soon.
Exploring new approaches to web development. The future is exciting.
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most elegant.
Backend Engineer
Liaison International • Beirut, Lebanon • Oct 2024 – Present
  • Contributed to backend solutions using Django and Wagtail, including feature research and implementation
  • Improved deployment reliability and backend performance by resolving CI/CD issues, reducing response time from 2s to 0.6s, and debugging critical memory issues
  • Set up code quality and testing foundations using SonarQube, unit tests, and AI-assisted test generation
Software Development Intern
365 Retail Markets • Troy, USA • May – Aug 2024
  • Maintained company software using Spring Boot, Java, Kotlin, and MySQL
  • Collaborated on Jest unit tests of mobile applications with React Native for kiosk systems
  • Conducted presentations and participated in public speaking, team leadership and communication
Graduate Research Assistant
University of Michigan • Dearborn, USA • Sep 2023 – Jun 2024
  • Investigated AWS Lambda cold-start inefficiencies in Python caused by under-utilized module imports
  • Developed a statistical profiler that identifies under-utilized modules constituting ~50% of cold start time in multiple instances
Backend Developer
Layer Digital Solutions (Fintech) • Beirut, Lebanon • Oct 2021 – Dec 2022
  • Developed and maintained RESTful APIs in Go, leveraging PostgreSQL to support a robust, 10+ microservice architecture for fintech operations
  • Conducted thorough audit and system log analysis to identify and resolve critical issues, ensuring high reliability and compliance standards
  • Optimized database storage by eliminating redundant data, reducing disk usage by 80%, improving system efficiency and scalability for financial transaction processing
🔬
ColdSpy ↗
Research project • AWS Lambda serverless code profiler to detect cold-start Python library import inefficiencies
📚
Courseify ↗
Hackathon • Automatic academic course generation based on uploaded PDF textbook in under 1 minute using React, Material UI and Tailwind CSS
✓
HackDearborn2 Check-In ↗
Hackathon • React browser app used to check-in 206 attendees by QR Code
🎮
Shadow Mapping ↗
Graphics course • Achieved with ModernGL on Python in a team of 2
📊
Plotzy ↗
Software engineering course • Flutter polling app with Firebase backend in 4-person team
📡
P2P File Distribution ↗
Networks course • Python socket-based file sharing protocol over TCP and UDP
🌱
Pomato ↗
Graduation project • Flutter app to detect diseases among 10+ plants with Flask and AI backend
∫
i2 ↗
Science fair (2017) • Mathematical integration tool based on 10 original formulas using HTML/CSS/jQuery
2025 • IEEE ICDCS
SlimStart is a profile-guided optimization tool that reduces serverless cold-start latency by identifying and eliminating inefficient library loading patterns. Through runtime profiling and automated code transformations, it achieves up to 2.30× speedup in initialization latency and 2.26× improvement in end-to-end performance.
University of Michigan - Dearborn
MS, Computer and Information Science
Dearborn, MI • Apr 2024 • GPA: 3.83 • Google Developers Student Club
American University of Beirut
BS, Computer Science
Beirut, Lebanon • May 2021 • GPA: 3.66 • Dean's Honor List in all but one semester
Email
ali@alze.in
Location
Beirut, Lebanon
Website
ali.alze.in