dvidal.dev

Professional Experience

A comprehensive overview of my professional journey from start to finish. I've gotten to work in a variety of different environments - startups, non-profits, large tech companies, and even university positions!

Knight Hacks Leadership
Knight Hacks logo

Dev Lead, Former President 2024 - 2026

Knight Hacks
February 2024 - Present
Orlando, FL

Knight Hacks is UCF's software development and organization, and the place I conquered impostor syndrome as a developer. Now I take it upon myself as President to empower our members with the same confidence and make sure that our organization continues to operate smoothly, spreading our mission of fostering a community of aspiring developers.

LeadershipEvent PlanningTeam ManagementFundraisingCommunity BuildingPublic SpeakingProject ManagementMentorship
NVIDIA
NVIDIA logo

Software Engineer Intern

NVIDIA
May 2025 - August 2025
Santa Clara, CA

Contributing to the autonomous hardware recovery team (formerly Shoreline.io) for NVIDIA Mission Control, the software layer for AI factories. Working on log analysis pipelines and real-time monitoring systems.

KubernetesHelmNGINXPythonMachine LearningLlama ModelsLokiGrafanaConfluenceSlackAI Infrastructure
GitHub Campus Expert
GitHub logo

Campus Expert

GitHub
May 2025 - Present
Orlando, FL

As a GitHub for the University of Central Florida, I will be interfacing with the GitHub education team to help bring software development resources to my local community, Knight Hacks. I am super excited to help others pave their paths and find their voices in tech.

Community BuildingEvent PlanningGitHubEducationPublic SpeakingNetworkingStudent Advocacy
Pheratech Systems
Pheratech Systems logo

Software Engineer Intern

Pheratech Systems
December 2024 - April 2025
Orlando, FL

Researched Embodied General Intelligence and Sociobehavioral Robots for crisis and natural disaster search and rescue. Worked on computer vision and inventory management systems.

PythonComputer VisionYOLOv8Machine LearningRoboticsAI ResearchInventory ManagementEmbedded Systems
DormDevs LLC
DormDevs LLC. logo

Founding Engineer

DormDevs LLC.
April 2024 - January 2025
Orlando, FL

As a co-founder of DormDevs, I strive to create high-quality website solutions for businesses packaged with analytics and SEO optimization. Furthermore, we serve as a platform for aspiring student developers to gain real-world experience in web development through shadowing and coop opportunities

Web DevelopmentAnalyticsSEOLinux VPSTeam ManagementBusiness DevelopmentClient RelationsFreelance Management
UCF Bioinformatics Lab
UCF Computational Bioinformatics Laboratory logo

Undergraduate Researcher

UCF Computational Bioinformatics Laboratory
March 2024 - August 2024
Orlando, FL

Working in the Computational Bioinformatics Laboratory at UCF, my research focuses on the development of algorithms for the analysis of complex biological data with a focus on RNA-sequencing, Alternative Splicing Detection, and gene quantification.

PythonBioinformaticsRNA-SequencingMachine LearningData AnalysisNumpyPandasResearch
2025 Team Leaders
UCF Burnett Honors College logo

Honors Team Leader

UCF Burnett Honors College
July 2024 - December 2024
Orlando, FL

Honors Symposium is a core component of the Honors Curriculum at UCF, where incoming students learn what it means to be apart of the Honors community. I served as a mentor and instructor to 16 students, helping them navigate their first year at UCF, and created an environment where they could feel welcome and make friends.

LeadershipMentorshipEvent PlanningStudent DevelopmentAdministrationPublic SpeakingCommunity Building
UCF Orientation
UCF Burnett Honors College logo

Honors Orientation Ambassador

UCF Burnett Honors College
May 2024 - July 2024
Orlando, FL

As an Honors Orientation Ambassador, I was responsible for advising incoming Honors Computer Science students during registration. Meeting with my students over the course of a month, I gave professional assistance with registering for classes, and provided guidance on how to navigate computer science at UCF.

Academic AdvisingStudent SupportCourse RegistrationOrientationComputer ScienceCommunicationMentorship

Professional Experience - Complete Details

Dev Lead, Former President 2024 - 2026 at Knight Hacks

Period: February 2024 - Present

Location: Orlando, FL

Description: Knight Hacks is UCF's software development and organization, and the place I conquered impostor syndrome as a developer. Now I take it upon myself as President to empower our members with the same confidence and make sure that our organization continues to operate smoothly, spreading our mission of fostering a community of aspiring developers.

Responsibilities

  • Revamped organizational web infrastructure, migrating from a single server to a distributed system of micro services increasing application availability by **67%**.
  • Led a team of **12** software engineers to complete biweekly development sprints across various features.
  • Orchestrated a CI/CD pipeline for core services hosted on **Microsoft Azure** ensuring a positive developer experience and application availability.
  • Maintained a large mono-repository with **6** applications and **4** services through enforcing code-quality best practices.
  • Managed a non-profit organization with **800+** members, **1,500+** hackers, and **$75,000** dollars in yearly revenue focused on creating confident, capable, and passionate developers.
  • Organized the Knight Hacks VIII Hackathon for over **1700+** registrants and **1,024** attendees, with a total of **189** projects submitted.
  • Organized the Knight Hacks VII Hackathon for over **1200+** registrants and **547** attendees, with a total of **94** projects submitted.
  • Lead a team of **45** students to achieve deliverables such as **60** technical workshops a year and **100+** member mentorship.
  • Revamped the mentorship program, expanding the number of participants by **58%** compared to previous school year.
  • Personally secured nearly **$35,000** for the organization by networking with numerous **Fortune 500** companies over 2 years.

Achievements

    Technologies & Skills

    • Leadership
    • Event Planning
    • Team Management
    • Fundraising
    • Community Building
    • Public Speaking
    • Project Management
    • Mentorship

    Software Engineer Intern at NVIDIA

    Period: May 2025 - August 2025

    Location: Santa Clara, CA

    Description: Contributing to the autonomous hardware recovery team (formerly Shoreline.io) for NVIDIA Mission Control, the software layer for AI factories. Working on log analysis pipelines and real-time monitoring systems.

    Responsibilities

    • Contributed to the autonomous hardware recovery team for [NVIDIA Mission Control](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/mission-control-software/), the software layer for AI factories.
    • Overhauled **Kubernetes / Helm** infrastructure to achieve zero-downtime rolling upgrades, fully eliminating **10 hours** of scheduled maintenance per year per customer and accelerating development environment build times by **93%**.
    • Implemented industry standard horizontal scaling techniques to core services, increasing traffic bandwidth.
    • Optimized network flow by modifying **NGINX** ingress patterns and service-to-service communication, reducing latency.
    • Developed a log analysis tool that automatically identifies and filters noisy logs, reducing time-to-debug of core services.
    • Leveraged fine-tuned Llama models to generate **semantic embeddings** for clustering and identifying noisy log patterns.
    • Engineered a daily **CRON** service to generate noisy log reports and grep pattern files, streamlining daily debugging tasks.
    • Integrated with real-time **Loki** logs from **Grafana**, and automatically published log anomalies to **Confluence** and **Slack** for immediate developer visibility.

    Achievements

      Technologies & Skills

      • Kubernetes
      • Helm
      • NGINX
      • Python
      • Machine Learning
      • Llama Models
      • Loki
      • Grafana
      • Confluence
      • Slack
      • AI Infrastructure

      Campus Expert at GitHub

      Period: May 2025 - Present

      Location: Orlando, FL

      Description: As a GitHub for the University of Central Florida, I will be interfacing with the GitHub education team to help bring software development resources to my local community, Knight Hacks. I am super excited to help others pave their paths and find their voices in tech.

      Responsibilities

      • Serve as an advocate for technologists and developers at the University of Central Florida.
      • Plan events on-campus to help make software development accessible to the early-technologist community.
      • Interface with GitHub Education as a Campus Expert to help bring resources and information to my local campus community.

      Achievements

        Technologies & Skills

        • Community Building
        • Event Planning
        • GitHub
        • Education
        • Public Speaking
        • Networking
        • Student Advocacy

        Software Engineer Intern at Pheratech Systems

        Period: December 2024 - April 2025

        Location: Orlando, FL

        Description: Researched Embodied General Intelligence and Sociobehavioral Robots for crisis and natural disaster search and rescue. Worked on computer vision and inventory management systems.

        Responsibilities

        • Researched Embodied General Intelligence and Sociobehavioral Robots for crisis and natural disaster search and rescue.
        • Rearchitected public facing company website, increasing SEO visibility by **10x**.
        • Developed an internal inventory management system, reducing unnecessary wasteful restock purchases by **40%**.
        • Trained custom **YOLOv8** object detection models with a resulting **97%** accuracy in recognizing target objects.
        • Aided in securing pre-seed funding by contributing to multiple high-impact technical projects across the company.

        Achievements

          Technologies & Skills

          • Python
          • Computer Vision
          • YOLOv8
          • Machine Learning
          • Robotics
          • AI Research
          • Inventory Management
          • Embedded Systems

          Founding Engineer at DormDevs LLC.

          Period: April 2024 - January 2025

          Location: Orlando, FL

          Description: As a co-founder of DormDevs, I strive to create high-quality website solutions for businesses packaged with analytics and SEO optimization. Furthermore, we serve as a platform for aspiring student developers to gain real-world experience in web development through shadowing and coop opportunities

          Responsibilities

          • Empowered businesses with powerful insights and uplifted students with contracted work opportunities.
          • Developed a business facing dashboard with real time analytics, billing, and a ticketing system for routine maintenance.
          • Hosted and deployed open source analytics, authentication, and database on a Linux VPS.
          • Managed a team of contracted freelance developers sourced from local colleges and universities.
          • Partenered with businesses of various sizes throughout Florida to provide web development services.

          Achievements

            Technologies & Skills

            • Web Development
            • Analytics
            • SEO
            • Linux VPS
            • Team Management
            • Business Development
            • Client Relations
            • Freelance Management

            Undergraduate Researcher at UCF Computational Bioinformatics Laboratory

            Period: March 2024 - August 2024

            Location: Orlando, FL

            Description: Working in the Computational Bioinformatics Laboratory at UCF, my research focuses on the development of algorithms for the analysis of complex biological data with a focus on RNA-sequencing, Alternative Splicing Detection, and gene quantification.

            Responsibilities

            • Reduced the runtime of the AS-Quant and APA-Scan laboratory pipelines by **75%** by leveraging concurrency and parallelism in Python
            • Assisted in data collection, sanitization, and transformation using numpy and pandas.
            • Researched Machine Learning solutions for cancer detection with processed RNA-Seq data.

            Achievements

              Technologies & Skills

              • Python
              • Bioinformatics
              • RNA-Sequencing
              • Machine Learning
              • Data Analysis
              • Numpy
              • Pandas
              • Research

              Honors Team Leader at UCF Burnett Honors College

              Period: July 2024 - December 2024

              Location: Orlando, FL

              Description: Honors Symposium is a core component of the Honors Curriculum at UCF, where incoming students learn what it means to be apart of the Honors community. I served as a mentor and instructor to 16 students, helping them navigate their first year at UCF, and created an environment where they could feel welcome and make friends.

              Responsibilities

              • Led a **15** student breakout room during the Honors Symposium, facilitating discussions and answering questions.
              • Planned monthly social events for all Symposium students to help them make friends and feel welcome at UCF.
              • Performed administrative tasks for the breakout room like creating and grading assignments

              Achievements

                Technologies & Skills

                • Leadership
                • Mentorship
                • Event Planning
                • Student Development
                • Administration
                • Public Speaking
                • Community Building

                Honors Orientation Ambassador at UCF Burnett Honors College

                Period: May 2024 - July 2024

                Location: Orlando, FL

                Description: As an Honors Orientation Ambassador, I was responsible for advising incoming Honors Computer Science students during registration. Meeting with my students over the course of a month, I gave professional assistance with registering for classes, and provided guidance on how to navigate computer science at UCF.

                Responsibilities

                • Served as an academic advisor of **20** Computer Science students for course registration at UCF.
                • Worked our in-person orientation sessions, where students were introduced to the Honors College.
                • Provided a friendly face and positive attitude to help incoming students feel welcome at the Burnett Honors College.

                Achievements

                  Technologies & Skills

                  • Academic Advising
                  • Student Support
                  • Course Registration
                  • Orientation
                  • Computer Science
                  • Communication
                  • Mentorship