Ethan Chiu
Software Engineer
Based in Seattle, I work on AWS CloudWatch. Past work spans developer tools, marketplaces, trading platforms, and education.
Research
Started with online programming courses on edX, then researched and built open source tools at Wellesley College's DAV Lab around echo chambers, digital literacy, anonymous social communities, and hate speech spread.
Created PythonBuddy, a web-based Python editor with live syntax checking and code execution, then carried that early hands-on experience into summer startup internships in high school.
Trading platforms
Built trading and market-data systems around crypto analysis and MarketStore.
Marketplace checkout
Shipped buyer-facing checkout improvements in a large production marketplace codebase.
Improved inline billing-address changes and helped make the cart experience faster and more reliable using Etsy's newer frontend framework.
Campus involvements
Worked across research, mentorship, nonprofit consulting focused on strategy and marketing, and tools that matched students with personalized campus resources. Taught CS 61A as a course tutor and volunteered as a community mentor through CSM.
Developer tooling at scale
Shipped open source GitHub Actions features used by developers worldwide, including Composite Actions in the Runner codebase.
Worked across product, planning, and engineering for continuous delivery and larger runner features, including performance improvements to orchestration.
Observability systems
Build observability systems for AWS CloudWatch, including log search, indexing, lifecycle management, AWS Config integrations, and operational tooling.
Recent work includes S3 Tables lifecycle, resource discovery across AWS services, query optimization, anti-entropy workflows, and reliability work for large-scale logging systems.
AI agents with human judgment
I use AI agents across the product lifecycle, from product thinking and design exploration to implementation, review, testing, and launch.
The point is to protect attention for work that still needs human judgment: understanding people, naming tradeoffs, and deciding what should exist.
I am drawn to the overlap of engineering, AI agents, and human-centered design: building things that genuinely serve people instead of only automating around them.
Stewardship
I care about what gets built, how it holds up, and who it affects.
For distributed systems, that means designing for accessibility, scalability, fault tolerance, and high availability.
I try to bring that reliability to people too: low ego, strong ownership, bias for action, steady learning, and investing in others.
Intro