Michael Ko
Staff Software Engineer at Alien Swordfish Labs
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMichael Ko is a Staff Software Engineer and former founder with 13 years of engineering experience and eight years focused in Education Technology, currently shaping scalable, secure web products at Chegg from Edmonton, Canada. He blends hands-on craftsmanship—writing well-tested, performant backend and frontend code—with systems-level solutions design and people leadership, translating product goals into secure-by-default architectures. As a technical lead he has driven product roadmaps, performance and testing improvements, and successful customer integrations that contributed to a company exit. Outside of EdTech he explores real-time computing and game systems through side projects and meaningful open-source contributions to well-known World of Warcraft tooling like Simulationcraft and WoWAnalyzer, bringing domain expertise in simulation and UI analysis. Colleagues rely on him to balance pragmatic delivery with long-term maintainability and to anticipate user needs by wearing the product designer’s hat.
13 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
International Baccalaureate Diploma, International Baccalaureate Diploma at Jasper Place High SchoolBSc, Computational Intelligence and Design, BSc, Computational Intelligence and Design at The University of British Columbia
English
Github Skills (24)
simulation10
algorithms10
javascript10
c-language10
game-engine10
gameplay10
world-of-warcraft10
analyser10
game-programming10
game-dev10
analyzer10
simulations10
typescript10
ui-design10
data-structure10
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
simulationcraft/simc
May 2017 - Feb 2020
Simulationcraft engine/GUI
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:68 commits, 14 PRs, 41 pushes in 2 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily contributed to the Simulationcraft engine, focusing on the Druid class module. Their work involved implementing and refining abilities, particularly for the Guardian specialization, like Fury of Nature, and updating the application priority list (APL). They also addressed bugs, optimized Maul usage, and integrated Azerite traits, reflecting a strong understanding of game mechanics and the simulation environment.
c-plus-plussimulationguisimulationcraftreal-time-strategy
WoWAnalyzer/WoWAnalyzer
Aug 2017 - Dec 2018
WoWAnalyzer is a tool to help you analyze and improve your World of Warcraft raiding performance through various relevant metrics and gameplay suggestions.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:81 commits, 31 PRs, 25 comments in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:Michael primarily contributed to the front-end of the WoWAnalyzer project. Their commits focused on enhancing the user interface by rewriting and improving talent descriptions. They also added new features to provide more in-depth analysis of character performance, including the addition of new metrics to analyze player uptime of key abilities, as well as including suggestions on how to improve player performance based on the analysis of combat logs. The user also introduced new items for analysis.
luareactsuggestionswarcraftworld-of-warcraft
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