Yusra Ashar.
Software engineer.
B.S. Computer Science, Software Engineering Concentration — California State University, Monterey Bay, 2026. I work across the stack — React, Node, and MySQL on the front end and data layer, C and C++ closer to the metal — with coursework spanning software engineering, databases, operating systems, networks, algorithms, and data science.
B.S. Computer Science — CSUMB
Software Engineering Concentration, conferred 2026. Fourteen upper-division courses across six terms, from software design and operating systems through databases, networks, algorithms and data science, ending in two terms of capstone delivery on a client's production codebase.
Every course has its own page with the catalog description, learning outcomes, and the project or evidence I produced.
What I bring to a team
- Build and ship full-stack software. Design a relational schema, expose it through an API, and put an accessible interface on top of it — then document and deploy it.
- Work close to the system. Reason about processes, memory, concurrency, and network behavior in C and C++, and debug performance where the abstraction leaks.
- Choose the right algorithm and defend the choice. Analyze efficiency, and apply divide-and-conquer, dynamic programming, and greedy strategies deliberately.
- Engineer as part of a team. Turn requirements into specifications and UML designs, run Agile sprints, review others' code and documents, and coordinate delivery.
- Work with data and communicate it honestly. Clean and explore real datasets, model them, and explain what the results do and do not support.
- Think about impact. Assess the ethical and equity consequences of technical decisions, informed by primary research and community practice.
Where I'm headed
- Near term. Build full-stack products on a team, working across the API and data layer, with a focus on retrieval-augmented systems and event-driven backends.
- Recently shipped. Led the ComicSeen engineering team and delivered the notification system refactor end to end on a client-owned production codebase.
- Technical depth. Go deeper on backend architecture and distributed systems, building on the operating systems and networking foundation from my pathway.
- Longer term. Pursue graduate study in computer science, continuing the research thread I started in CST 462S on how people come to trust or distrust AI systems.
- Craft. Keep the design sensibility from CST 328 in my engineering work — interfaces that are accessible and clear, not just functional.