software engineer

I like building things.

I'm Sooraj Arakkal, a Computing Science graduate from the University of Alberta, currently working as a Software Engineer at Amazon Prime. I've sped up data-heavy UIs and run community tools used by thousands of students. I care about software that's simple, fast, and useful.

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experience

Where I've worked

Jan 2024 — Present · Vancouver, BC
Software Engineer

Amazon
- Led migration of the Prime cancellation/pause page across global marketplaces from legacy infrastructure to a unified, modern system.
- Migrated the payment history widget across marketplaces, building reusable business objects adopted by other teams and fixing a long-standing invoice corruption bug.
- Resolved a launch-blocker for the worldwide Prime discounted trial plan, enabling an on-time launch.
- Led a cross-region infrastructure migration, refactoring configurations to be region-agnostic and cleaning up unused dependencies.
Jan 2023 — Apr 2023 · Edmonton, AB
Teaching Assistant, CMPUT 101

University of Alberta
- Led lab sessions presenting core Computing Science topics.
- Graded midterms, lab work, and assignments; answered student questions.
May 2022 — Aug 2022 · Vancouver, BC
Software Development Engineer Intern

Amazon
- Built a service letting clients define customer cohorts for product recommendations.
- Wrote API specs in Smithy and Java; deployed with AWS Lambda and API Gateway.
- Designed a React + TypeScript dashboard for external clients to work with the API.
- Added authentication and input validation for robustness and security.
Aug 2021 — Apr 2022 · Edmonton, AB
Computer Science Co-op

Interface Fluidics
- Refactored GraphQL queries for 7500% faster data access using virtualization and pagination.
- Reworked the image-analysis UI, cutting task completion time 5x and mouse clicks in half.
- Built Python tooling to sort, stack, and convert image sets into video with FFmpeg.
May 2021 — Jun 2021 · Remote
Full-Stack Software Developer

Sparrowfi
- Wrote backend code handling external HTTP requests from third-party endpoints.
- Worked with AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, GraphQL, and Bulma.io.
Jan 2021 — Apr 2021 · Edmonton, AB
Teaching Assistant, CMPUT 272

University of Alberta
- Helped set course difficulty, graded assignments, and answered queries.
- Gave 200 students detailed midterm feedback, contributing to a 10% higher final-exam average.