Based in Seattle, WA
Rafay Farah
Software Engineer
Computer Science student at the University of Washington. I spent this past summer doing AI research at Pitt's LRDC lab. Mostly I'm into software engineering and building applications, especially around AI, developer tools, and full-stack work.
About
B.S. Computer Science
University of Washington
I’m interested in software engineering, AI for software engineering, and research at the intersection of the two, especially developer tools, LLM systems, and how developers actually use them.
Relevant Coursework
Experience
Research Assistant
Aug 2026 — Present
Carnegie Mellon University
- Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D)
NSF REU Undergraduate Research Intern
Jun 2026 — Aug 2026
LRDC FACET Lab, University of Pittsburgh
- Selected as 1 of 7 students for a nationally competitive software engineering research internship program
- Built and deployed Cora, a full-stack Next.js/TypeScript tutoring platform now being tested in several Pennsylvania high schools, implementing user-facing features and preparing the product for classroom use
- Integrated Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI APIs behind a unified model workflow, debugging application behavior across tutoring and evaluation tasks and improving reliability across AI-guided interactions
- Collaborated through Git, pull requests, code reviews, testing, and weekly team design discussions to implement new features, resolve issues, and improve software quality before classroom deployment and field testing
Software Engineer
Jan 2026 — Jun 2026
Startup Club
- Developed a React/TypeScript company-discovery platform with database-backed search and filtering, helping evaluate 500+ prospective companies and reducing manual research time by 40% while accelerating outreach
- Built and tested end-to-end API workflows integrating 3+ external services, backend logic, and persistent data storage to transform raw company data into structured insights and ranked outreach recommendations
- Translated 10+ product requirements and user stories into scoped engineering tasks, iterating through weekly Agile development cycles to deliver features more efficiently and align the product with stakeholder needs
Undergraduate Researcher
Apr 2026 — Jun 2026
Sensors, Energy, and Automation Laboratory (SEAL), University of Washington
- Conducting undergraduate research at UW Seattle's SEAL Lab, developing and evaluating LLM-powered automation workflows for research proposal generation, document processing, and academic task orchestration
Technical Lead
Jan 2026 — Jun 2026
Beta Alpha Psi, University of Washington
- Architected and deployed chapter web platform with 20+ pages and integrated member portal serving 200+ members; engineered multi-method payment system driving 40% engagement increase
- Sole technical lead managing deployment, features, and production issues for 200+ active members
BASC Paraprofessional
Sep 2023 — Jun 2026
Issaquah School District, Sammamish, WA
Projects
Reads your Instagram message history and surfaces seven key insights meant to rekindle friendships: who mattered most, the moments you forgot, the question you never answered, the plan you keep making and never do. Every insight shows the real messages behind it and ends in a draft message written in your own texting style. Built with a team of four on a real archive of 409 conversations and 41,107 messages, surfacing 47 friendships going quiet.
A deterministic 3D Jenga physics benchmark built on the Mesocosm platform, evaluating multimodal AI reasoning about physical stability and spatial structure. Built with PyBullet for rigid body dynamics and collision resolution, with a constrained action space for camera control and directional block pushes. Tested GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini, with a replay-driven WebGL viewer reconstructing full episodes from exported traces.
Full-stack resume platform with customizable templates, visual editing, and LaTeX PDF generation. Engineered a server-side LaTeX rendering pipeline enabling code-free resume customization and export. Integrated authentication, ATS analysis, subscriptions, and AI-assisted content generation.
iOS and web calendar app with Claude API integration for natural language event creation and smart scheduling suggestions. Built the full iOS app and shipped a companion web version, both publicly accessible via TestFlight and Vercel.
Interview practice app simulating technical and behavioral interviews with STAR-based feedback. Integrates Claude API with dynamic resume parsing to tailor questions to your background.
Full-stack analytics bot serving a 750+ member Discord community. Tracks engagement metrics, generates real-time activity leaderboards, and runs automated moderation with persistent SQLite storage deployed on Railway.
Full-stack event ticketing and management platform built as a software engineering group project. Spring Boot REST API backend, React frontend, MySQL database, and Docker for containerized deployment.
Hobs Job Jar
Job hunting tool designed to simplify and organize the job search process for students navigating early career applications.
Professor research agent that automatically surfaces faculty publications, research interests, and lab info to help students find the right researchers to reach out to.
Hackathons
Turns your Instagram message history into seven key insights meant to rekindle friendships, each ending in a message you can actually send.
View full project
Won Top 3
A deterministic 3D Jenga physics benchmark measuring how well multimodal models reason about physical stability.
View full project
Gamified accountability app where Claude verifies quest completions and friends compete on live leaderboards. Built end-to-end in under 24 hours.
View full project
Job hunting tool that organizes the early-career application process for students.
View full project
Research agent that surfaces faculty publications and lab info so students can find the right professors to contact.
View full project
HackGT 2026
Heading to Georgia Tech’s flagship hackathon this fall.
Cal Hacks 2026
Heading to Cal Hacks, the largest collegiate hackathon, at UC Berkeley this fall.
MHacks 2026
Heading to MHacks at the University of Michigan this fall.
DubHacks
Applied — waiting to hear back.
HackHarvard
Applied — waiting to hear back.
HackPrinceton
Applied — waiting to hear back.
MakeCU
Columbia’s hardware hackathon. Applied — waiting to hear back.
Resume
Contact
I’m back in Seattle and always open to talking about research, software, or anything interesting. Feel free to reach out.