Open to opportunities

Steven Zhu

@stevenzhu1

Message

Senior frontend and mobile engineer building React-driven products that simplify complex workflows for users.

United States

Message

What I'm looking for

I want to build user-friendly, well-designed frontend and mobile experiences that simplify complex workflows. I’m happiest collaborating across product and backend teams, taking ownership end-to-end, and improving reliability through smart instrumentation and testing.

I’m guided by “The only way to do great work is to love what you do,” and I approach engineering with curiosity, clean design, and practical problem solving. My career spans IBM, Tricentis, and now PayPal, where I collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to ship reliable systems and meaningful product impact.

At PayPal, I’ve taken senior-level ownership across payment operations UI workflows, improving the Payment Review Console and reworking Risk Case Lookup to simplify navigation and reduce manual lookup steps. I’ve built reusable frontend components with React, TypeScript, and Storybook, improved mobile/tablet usability for review screens, and added frontend tracking and Splunk trace IDs to speed debugging with backend teams, while mentoring engineers through code reviews and production support.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Senior Software Engineer

Current

PayPal

Sep 2024 - Present (1 year 10 months)

Owned PayPal payment operations UI workflows and improved the Payment Review Console and Risk Case Lookup experience using React, TypeScript, and Java APIs. Built reusable components, enhanced mobile/tablet usability, and added debugging/tracking improvements to support review workflows.

React TypeScript Redux Mobile Web Storybook PostgreSQL Redis Kafka Splunk Datadog Grafana REST APIs GraphQL

Software Engineer II

PayPal

Jun 2021 - Aug 2024 (3 years 2 months)

Built frontend and full-stack features for PayPal account and payment operations, including transaction search and review workflows. Developed reusable UI patterns, improved lookup usability, and partnered with product, risk, and operations teams to convert manual checks into guided dashboards and self-service screens.

React TypeScript JavaScript Java Spring Boot PostgreSQL Redis REST APIs

Software Engineer

Tricentis

Nov 2017 - Apr 2020 (2 years 5 months)

Built full-stack features for qTest-style test management workflows and developed test run reporting screens using React and TypeScript. Improved report load times by tuning PostgreSQL queries and indexes.

Python Django Flask React TypeScript PostgreSQL Redis REST APIs

Cloud Tech Engagement Co-Op

IBM

Jun 2016 - Jan 2017 (7 months)

Supported IBM Cloud engagement projects by building lightweight web pages, internal reporting views, and demo tools. Helped prepare cloud migration demos using IBM Cloud, PostgreSQL, REST APIs, and Docker services.