Let's be honest, you've got twenty tabs open, a meeting in ten minutes, and exactly zero bandwidth for someone's whole life story. So here's the short version of who I am, what I've done, and what I'm building next. If you ever do find that rare free hour, the full story's on About Me.
Summary
Hi, I'm Sojin! I'm currently transitioning to UX after 6+ years as a software engineer, and that pull toward people over code started earlier than you'd think. In high school, I built a cafeteria-menu site for teachers who couldn't read Korean. That hooked me on Computer Science, not the code itself, but what it could do for someone. That curiosity led to a Computer Science and Statistics degree at Macalester college, a year as a data integration consultant, and six years on Amazon's Silk browser team.
Somewhere along the way, I realized engineers decide how something gets built, but rarely why it needs to exist in the first place. That's what's pulling me back to school, to learn how to ask that question well.
- Based in Seattle, WA ยท originally from South Korea
- 6 years as an SDE at Amazon, and realized I cared more about why something got built than how
- Starting an M.S. in Human-Centered Design & Engineering at UW, Sep 2026
Experience
- Finished a UX certificate, built this site as hands-on practice before school starts
- Delivered ongoing feature improvements through continuous release cycles and A/B experimentation
- Cared more about user feedback and real-world friction than the launch itself
- Realized I had little say in what was worth building, which sent me to grad school
- Built REST APIs and integration pipelines as a MuleSoft developer
- Traveled to Canada to translate a client's real needs into something we could build
- Loved solving the problem in front of me, not the data wrangling, so I went looking for a pure software engineering role
- Built Beacon, a 911-location app that won 1st place at a hackathon
- Two internships alongside that
- Noticed I lit up building tools people used, a lot less moving data behind the scenes
Projects
Two highlights. Click the first to open its full case study, the second's still a blank slate. Six more, including a Q-learning Mario agent and a 911-location hackathon app, are on Projects.
