Full-Stack Engineer
Learn, code, grow

After a brief career in finance, I stumbled into tech following my passion for code. Over the past 9+ years, I've been building products on the web across various industries. Here I share my journey, learnings, and projects.

When not coding, my default mode is 🏊 🚴 🏃

Minh Ha

Latest Post

From AWS CodeDeploy to GitHub Actions + Ansible

From AWS CodeDeploy to GitHub Actions + Ansible

Revisiting another infrastructure overhaul: streamlining a deployment workflow

DevOpsGH ActionsAnsibleCodeDeployInfraSecurity
26/01/2025

Where I've been

Vretta Inc. logo
April 2016 ~ Jan 2018

Software Developer

Vretta Inc.

A Toronto-based ed-tech startup with a mission to raise the level of numeracy through innovative technology. Vretta works closely with educational institutions around the world to craft the best interactive learning resources for mathematics at all levels of education.

I developed the company’s flagship assessment project.

As a software developer, I worked closely with architects, designers and domain experts to execute on the creation and maintenance of web and mobile based applications.

This was my first professional dev job in my transition from my past life in finance, the work was tough 💦, but there's nothing that taught me to program a computer like building interactive games 🎮.

DTab is a mobile assessment platform that houses interactive assessments in English and French, and can be deployed on tablets to be used for large-scale testing in an offline environment.

I was the primary developer on the mobile project, developing both the assement modules and the offline data collection and submission system.

Dtab mobile assessment platform
Technologies
HaxeNode.jsMySQLPouchDB
Key Highlights
  • Interactive game development
  • Offline data collection and submission
  • Interaction logging and replay system
View Project

MathemaTIC is a personalized learning platform for students to engage with, and have fun learning, mathematics in primary and secondary schools.

I worked along side fellow developers, building interactive learning modules.

MathemaTIC learning platform
Technologies
Haxe
Key Highlights
  • Interactive game development
  • Lead the innovation in re-playable interactive data collection
View Project
Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) logo
Jan 2018 ~ Jan 2021

Full Stack Developer

Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR)

The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) is a collaborative, not-for-profit research institute that conducts and enables high-impact translational cancer research to accelerate the development of discoveries for patients around the world while maximizing the economic benefit of this research for the people of Ontario.

As part of the software engineering team, I helped build systems that enabled researchers to share, access and analyze large-scale genomic data.

My work included developing web applications, APIs, and data processing pipelines, as well as maintaining open-source tools used across multiple projects.

Here I also learned about and got to contribute to the operations of a large-scale software project, including CI/CD, containerization, cloud infrastructure, and IaC tools. The learnings here continue to be in my toolbox today. 🧰

❤️ Software engineering at the OICR was a great experience, amazing people with a purpose. ❤️

The International Cancer Genome Consortium Accelerating Research in Genomic Oncology (ICGC ARGO).

I lead the frontend and public API development, working closely with a designer, backend developers, business analyst and bioinformaticians to deliver a user-friendly and performant platform for researchers to submit, access and analyze large-scale genomic and clinical data.

Till today, ICGC Argo remains one of my favorite professional projects. ❤️

Some repos you can check out:

ICGC ARGO Data Platform
Technologies
ReactTypeScriptNext.JSNode.jsGraphQLApolloElasticsearchKubernetesDockerKafkaAnsible
Key Highlights
  • Drove the adoption of a component-driven workflow, creating a custom reusable UI component system
  • Advocated for and implemented a GraphQL API to wrap microservices, significantly reducing API calls and frontend complexity
  • Designed and developed a real-time data processing pipeline on Kafka and Elasticsearch
View Project

The Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center (Kids First DRC) is a collaborative pediatric research effort with the goal to understand the genetic causes and links between childhood cancer and congenital disorders.

Technologies
ReactFlowNode.jsGraphQLElasticsearchAWSTerraform
Key Highlights
  • Lead the development of the frontend and search API of the portal
  • Main maintainer of Arrager, an open-source data-portal generation framework
View Project
Polymath Inc. logo
Jan 2021 ~ Mar 2022

Senior Frontend Developer

Polymath Inc.

Polymath provides technology to create, issue, and manage digital securities on the blockchain.

I built dApps and layer-2 services running on the Polymesh network, most notably leading the development of the network's onboarding pipeline and technical collaboration with third-party KYC provider.

With my business background in finance, Polymath was an opportunity to get in touch with a part of me that felt long-gone. Here my knowledge of corporate finance actually came in quite helpful. 🏦

I developed the Onboarding Integration Service to help KYC service providers have a smooth integration with the blockchain and the Polymesh Unique Identity System (PUIS).

Along with building the tech, I also took part in evaluating and selecting KYC vendors and partners, to join the network and help support the network's vision of a compliant blockchain.

I've also contributed to the company's blog with a post about this service, follow the link for more info!

Technologies
ReactTypeScriptNode.jsServerlessAWSSNSSQS
Key Highlights
  • Designed and developed a robust data-processing pipeline to handle onboarding requests
  • Parallel processing of concurrent onboarding requests while maintaining order of operations for each
  • Robust against external service outages and blockchain network issues
View Project
Quantropi Inc. logo
Mar 2022 ~ Present

Senior Fullstack Developer

Quantropi Inc.

Quantropi is building a quantum-secure encryption platform to protect the internet from the threat of quantum computing. As a senior on the team, I

  • Lead the development of the company's flagship QiSpace suit of product, which provides enterprises with efficient and secure distribution of quantum entropy and key management over existing internet infrastructure.
  • Act as scrum master for the whole engineering team, sourcing and managing tickets, ensuring effective communication between team members to align with sprint goals.

Check out my work at: https://github.com/quantropi-minh

A browser extension to help Palo Alto Networks firewall administrators generate and share secret keys across multiple firewall instances. The extension securely generates preshared keys seeded by true quantum-random numbers, and locally stores them in an ephemeral vault to be shared across multiple firewall instances.
QiSpace SEQUR PPK Generator
Technologies
ReactTypeScriptPlasmo
Key Highlights
  • Started as a year-end experimental project, I took a lead this project from concept to production
  • Tightly integrated with Palo Alto's firewall management interface for secret key sharing
  • Designed and implemented cryptographically secure transfer and ephemeral storage of secret keys
  • Promoted by Palo Alto Networks as a partner solution for firewall administrators
View Project
To support a collaboration with Palo Alto Networks, our product QiSpace Enterprise needed to be deployable across multiple regions. After evaluating various options, I proactively proposed and implemented a solution on GCP that spans three Kubernetes clusters across three regions, securing our ongoing collaboration.
Technologies
KubernetesHelmDockerGCPNode.jsRedisPostgreSQL
Key Highlights
  • Proactively designed and proposed the architecture
  • Eliminated the need to hire a dedicated DevOps engineer
  • Oversaw the implementation of special API spec for entropy service
  • Resulted in securing ongoing collaboration with Palo Alto Networks
View Project
Future

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