Available for new opportunities

William Tsang.
I keep search fast
and systems calm.

Senior Software Engineer in San Francisco. 10+ years building resilient, high-performance systems — the last five running large-scale Elasticsearch infrastructure, distributed pipelines, and AI-augmented DevOps workflows at Zendesk.

williamktsang.us
View experience will.ktsang@gmail.com
10+
Years engineering
5 yrs
Search infrastructure
11 yrs
At Zendesk, 3 roles
SF
Remote-friendly
01 — About

Platform reliability meets developer experience

I'm a Senior Software Engineer with over a decade of experience building and scaling production systems. My deepest expertise is in large-scale Elasticsearch infrastructure — managing global cluster lifecycles, automating deployments, and optimizing distributed indexing pipelines.

At Zendesk (2015–2026) I grew from a Web Applications Developer building customer-facing UI into a Search Infrastructure Engineer owning mission-critical systems globally. I thrive at the intersection of platform reliability and developer experience.

Today I actively integrate AI-driven workflows — Cursor, Claude Code, and MCP agents — into the development lifecycle to accelerate delivery and ops efficiency. I'm looking for my next challenge in DevOps, platform engineering, or search infrastructure.

RoleSenior Software Engineer
FocusSearch Infra · DevOps
LocationSan Francisco, CA
Experience10+ years
StatusOpen to offers
Emailwill.ktsang@gmail.com
02 — Experience

Where I've shipped

Zendesk San Francisco · Jun 2015 — Apr 2026
Senior Software Engineer — Search Infrastructure
2021 — 2026
  • Global Elasticsearch lifecycle management with blue/green deployments for zero-impact traffic cutover.
  • Automated cluster orchestration via a Python Falcon web app and Apache Airflow DAGs for complex task flows.
  • Parallelized distributed indexing pipelines — concurrent document processing that significantly cut cluster build times and cloud costs.
  • RBAC permissions for cluster builds, streamlining feature rollouts to GA and improving developer experience.
  • Chef cookbook maintenance for infrastructure immutability — strategic tagging and scripting for repeatable deployments.
  • Proactive incident management: daily health dashboards, precursor identification, and on-call escalation.
  • Security compliance via Wiz AMI vulnerability reviews and SLA/SLO adherence.
  • AI agent integration (Cursor, Claude Code, MCP skills) across the full feature development lifecycle.
  • Documentation standards — infra design docs, microservice architecture specs, incident runbooks.
Senior Platform Services Engineer
2018 — 2021
  • End-to-end data migration tooling — evolved scripts into a robust web application with persistent storage.
  • Metadata and full-instance copy services built with cross-functional teams, driving additional departmental revenue.
  • Complex customer go-live migrations under strict data-integrity requirements and minimal-downtime SLAs.
  • Multi-threaded migration pipelines to scale throughput and meet customer timelines.
  • Tackled undiscovered product areas to retain at-risk and churning customers.
Web Applications Developer
2015 — 2018
  • Designed and shipped user-facing components for the customer Help Center, improving UI/UX and CSAT scores.
  • Partnered with designers and stakeholders to take MVPs to production-ready products.
Uniquify San Jose · Jan 2013 — Sep 2014
ASIC Physical Design Engineer
2013 — 2014
  • Optimized block-level layered metal routing for clock tree synthesis and timing targets.
  • Verified DRC and LVS sign-off during project tape-out periods.
Revel Systems San Francisco · Feb 2012 — Dec 2012
Technical Support Engineer
2012
  • On-site client launches for seamless support experiences.
  • Networking and TCP/IP troubleshooting on field devices.
03 — Stack

Tools I reach for

Languages
PythonRubyJavaScriptHTML/CSS
Databases & Tools
ElasticsearchPostgreSQLMySQLDynamoDBAuroraRedisApache AirflowNginxCerebro
Cloud & DevOps
AWSKubernetesTerraformChefCI/CDSpinnakerDatadog
AI & Workflow
Claude CodeCursorMCP AgentsJIRAConfluence
04 — Projects

Building in the open

Project in progress
In progress

Something is brewing. Details coming soon.

TBD
05 — Education

Foundations

2011
B.S. Electrical Engineering
San Francisco State University

Concentration in ASIC Design. Strong foundation in circuits, digital systems, and low-level hardware engineering.

2015
Software Engineering Bootcamp
Dev Bootcamp

Intensive 19-week program covering core programming concepts, web development, pair programming, and engineering empathy.

06 — Contact

Let's build something.

Open to DevOps, platform engineering, and search infrastructure roles. Based in San Francisco — remote-friendly.

Email me GitHub
will.ktsang@gmail.com 415-275-1437 github.com/williamtsang9