About Claire

February 4, 2019 by eclair   (0) Comments

Hello there! My name is Claire Li. I’m a software engineer in Silicon Valley. My history with computing began at the age of 10 when I taught myself my first line of code.

My self-education was through HTML, Javascript, and PHP books that I pestered my parents to buy for me as a child. In middle & high school, I was an independent web developer for clients all over my hometown, San Diego. It progressed from front-end to back-end, then eventually into developing database driven web & mobile applications throughout college. As I became older, my taste shifted towards C++ & C which are now my favorite languages.

I studied Computer Science at UC San Diego, while developing and selling independent software projects as a student. I was also a serial hackathon competitor that competed in close to 15 hackathons. I have taken 1st Place (RivHacks 2015, UCR Citrus Hack 2015), 2nd Place (LinkedIn Intern Hackathon 2017), and received an honorable mention (Top Hardware Hack – UCSD 2016).

In between each school year, I had interned for Xerox (2014), Intel Corporation (2015 & 2016), LinkedIn (2017), and finally I am now working full-time as a software engineer at Apple (2018-Present).

My interests progressed beyond full-stack development, and evolved into an interest in networks, security, and distributed systems. This website will be about some of my (non-disclosed) adventures in Computer Science, and my other interests in computing, such as discrete math, cryptography, and embedded systems.

Outside of computing, I’m an aspiring sommelier. I’m passionate about cocktails. I was classically trained in music theory and piano for over a decade. I’m a strong public speaker and was the speech captain of my high school debate team for two consecutive years. I qualified and went to the annual California State Championships for Impromptu Speaking, National Extemporaneous Speaking, International Extemporaneous Speaking. I’m an amateur fashion designer, and wrote my own website as a teenager for my small business designing dresses. Nowadays, I still would like to sew more when I have time, and am hoping to post more photos of my work: