Ethan Sterling
Computer Science and Economics @ Northwestern University
About#
Hi, I’m Ethan, a new grad from Northwestern University with a Master’s in Computer Science and a Bachelor’s with Honors in Economics. I enjoy designing efficient solutions to complex problems and exploring technologies related to low-level programming, such as kernel development, performance optimization, and programming languages.
Education#
Northwestern University#
Departmental Honors in Economics | Phi Beta Kappa | Dean’s List | Innovation Fellowship | Accelerated Math Program
- Master of Science in Computer Science
- Bachelor of Arts in Economics
- Minor in Data Science
Check out my honors thesis!
Coursework:
- Kernel and Other Low-level Software Development, Operating Systems, Networking, Computer System Security, Data Structures, AI, Linear Algebra, Multivariable Calculus, Mechanism Design, Econometrics, Computer Systems, Game Design & Development, Data Science & Machine Learning, Programming Languages, Discrete Math, Agent-Based Models, Data Visualization, Agile Software Development, Automata theory and compilers, Quantum Computing
Experience#
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago#
Software Engineering Intern
- Implemented high-availability disaster recovery solution on AWS using Terraform to deploy multi-region application on ECS Fargate, enabling automated, health-check-driven failover managed by Route 53, Lambda, and CloudWatch
- Created dynamic Spring Batch pipeline for high-performance, parallel data migration from Oracle to PostgreSQL
- Engineered self-healing DevSecOps pipeline with GitLab CI to automate OSS dependency updates in Spring/Angular
- Architected critical RESTful APIs using Spring Boot to replace database links, aiding cloud migration effort
- Leveraged Docker, Terraform, Mockito unit tests, and built GitLab CI/CD pipelines for deployment and scalability
- Maintained FedLine Solutions, securing payment services for 100,000 users, moving 5 trillion dollars daily
The Buoyancy Project (FPVM)#
Research Contributor
- Built a JIT compiler in C, translating a stack-based floating-point IR into x86-64 assembly, leveraging compiled-code caching to achieve a 3.5x average speedup over interpretation and match original architecture-specific emulator
- Abstracted hardware dependencies by lowering same IR to LLVM IR, ensuring full architecture independence
- Enhanced VM instruction set with x86 comparison, precisely manipulating EFLAGS for complex conditional logic
- Defined architectural roadmap for high-performance computing by prototyping 256-bit AVX vector instruction support, detailing kernel state, register file, and compilation pipeline changes
Prescience Lab (DMPL)#
Research Assistant
- Scaled functional programming language MaPLe to a distributed memory environment using MPI and C
- Developed efficient parallel garbage collection for MPL, scaling to hundreds of cores and 1TB+ heap sizes
- Optimized whole-program compilation with MLton for performance competitive with C/C++
Fulminare Holdings#
Software Engineering Intern
- Wrote programs in Swift for data imports from other apps to improve user transitions to poker bankroll tracker
- Marketed app by creating and maintaining a Twitter bot to post daily threads resulting in an increase of over 8000 app users
- Conducted market research on fitness apps to help inform and provide feedback for new app development
Skills#
- Programming languages: Python, C, C++, Java, JavaScript, SQL, STATA, Swift, C#, R, Assembly, LISP, LaTex
- Software and technologies: Git, Unix shell, GDB, Valgrind, LLVM, Docker, Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, AWS, PostgreSQL, scikit-learn, TensorFlow, Jupyter, Spring Boot, Jenkins, Terraform, Mockito, GitLab, Vim, React, Angular, Hibernate, H2
Skills I’m learning this year:
- tmux
Projects#
Check out some of my highlighted projects!
- FPVM (Research)
- Domain Scanner (Networking)
- TANKS! (Programming)
- Sketch Classification (Machine Learning)
- Inflation-ABM (Economic Modeling)
- Group Votes (Full Stack)
- Heart Attack Indicators (EDA)
Other Repositories#
Explore more of my projects on my GitHub.
Connect With Me#
If you would like to get in touch, feel free to reach out. I will get back to you as soon as possible.
- Email: iethansterling@gmail.com
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ethan-sterling-2004
- GitHub: github.com/EthanSterling04
- Resume: Download PDF