Caleb Chang

About Caleb Chang

In one of my homework assignments from elementary school, we were tasked with finding the next number of a sequence, The first two were very simple, 1 2 3 4 blank, and 3 6 9 12 blank, but the next one had my 6 year old head in a twist, 1 5 2 6 3 7 blank. I ran to my dad for help, and he sat me down and drew the connection, showing the sequence was not simply increasing by a number, but followed an ABAB pattern, going up 4, down 3, up 4, and down 3 again. This problem has been the first square in developing my conscious pattern recognition which was paramount in studying computer science and applied math as well as finding and developing skills beneficial to software engineering. Learning computer science in terms of patterns rather than small details is one of key factors in my success. In Organization of Programming languages, we used OCaml, which was my introduction to functional programming. This first change was difficult because I had to get used to thinking in a different pattern. But, going from OCaml to Racket for the Compilers course was a lot easier, because even though a side-by-side comparison of code samples in each language looks much different, the underlying pattern of how to write in them remains the same. Another pattern I recognized that good software engineers had is that they are always well connected. It’s rare to see, despite stereotypes, an engineer that is antisocial and abhors helping others. Good engineers are always looking for new opportunities. One of the first things I did after enrolling in UMD was to ask many faculty members across multiple departments if they had any projects or research that would benefit the skills that I possess. Working with Dr Michelle Bensi in the civil engineering department was one of the best decisions I have made in my professional career. I was able to work with graduate student mentors. Lastly, I always want to be self-actuated in my work as a software engineer. My goal for the future is to always make new computer science projects for fun. My favorite personal project was creating an AI agent that played Tetris. It started from learning what machine learning models there are and what would be the best use cases, then from that learning about how to implement a deep Q learning model to read Tetris game data, as well as designing other metrics to measure the model’s success. I plan to always have a passion project to learn about computer science for the rest of my life.

Experience

1. Software Engineer

   Amazon

   May 2025 — Present · Seattle, WA, US

Education

• University of Maryland

  Bachelor of Science - BS

  2023 — 2027