Hello! My name is

David
Mao

I am a
software engineer
and a photography
enthusiast

I grew up in the Bay Area. Graduated from UCLA in 2014 with a degree in Computer Science.

I'm currently a Software Engineer at Airbnb in San Francisco, which merges work with my love for travel and exploration.

Before that, I was a Software Development Engineer II at Amazon.com in Seattle. I worked on Amazon's truck route planning engine, tackling a network optimization problem to move freight using transportation resources while minimizing cost.

Some of my favorite hobbies include photography, soccer, traveling, hiking, and music -- currently learning the electric guitar!

Photos

David Mao Photography

I developed my love for photography from a young age.

I grew up in a family that appreciated the outdoors, and we would often go camping, hiking, and skiing/snowboarding. On these trips, I found myself looking for a way to capture the incredible views that I saw. This is how I picked up photography, and I was always in possession of the family camera. I purchased my first DSLR in August of 2011, and have been practicing since then.

I've taken a handful of popular photos. One has been viewed 19 million times! Another has been reposted 300+ times on Instagram and has over 460K likes across the reposts! Check out my Personal Portfolio (link below) for more info.

Projects

Over the years, I've tried several photography portfolio sites. I've used Flickr, Smugmug, and made a custom Tumblr theme. I now share the majority of my photos on Instagram, but I thought it'd be fun to make and host a photography site to showcase some of my pictures.

This simple page features a responsive, full screen slideshow and Instagram integration to preview my feed. I used Google Guetzli JPEG encoder for image compression.

This is a weather forecast site. It's a mimimal, responsive, 1-page concept that I used to practice UI design and web implementation. It features animated weather icons, dynamic backgrounds based on the current weather, and location detection via the browser.

Technologies: HTML5 Geolocation; Google Maps API; Forecast.io; Bootstrap

Babelogue: Speech Translator

Google Hangouts is great, but lacks language translation functionality. Babelogue is a proof-of-concept Hangouts extension that helps make real-time multilingual communication more seamless, allowing users to transcend language barriers.

Babelogue achieves real-time speech translation. Users can speak (and/or type), and the words are recorded, translated and displayed to the other users automatically. (For the record: Babelogue was created before Skype launched its version.)

Technologies: Google Hangouts API; Google Translate API; SpeechToText API.

Whiteboard: Collaborative Platform

Whiteboard is a collaborative online whiteboard. It's a proof-of-concept cross-platform web-based application where users can type text, draw, post pictures, edit, create sessions, and download screenshots--all while the app syncs real-time via wifi. It is built to work on the desktop browser, iOS, and Android devices.

Technologies: PhoneGap; Firebase NoSQL Database; Fabric.js; Angular.js; Node.js; Hammer.js

Tronsformers: Graphics Game

Tronsformers is a proof-of-concept 3-D game. It utilizes a custom, self-built graphics engine and facial detection / head tracking library that allows a user to control the camera in a 3-D environment.

Technologies: WebGL; headtracker.js

Contact

Reach out to me!

I hope you've enjoyed my website! The layout design, development, and photos on this site are my own work.

If you want to get in contact with career/project opportunities, please email me or message me through LinkedIn