Dowon Kim

Senior Software Engineer · Galatea Associates

Dowon Kim.

Senior Software Engineer and tech lead at Galatea Associates, building real-time, ML-driven decision systems for some of the world's largest financial institutions.

About

A bit about me

I'm a senior software engineer and tech lead at Galatea Associates, where I build the real-time decisioning systems behind JPMorgan Chase's card-authorization platform, one of the largest in the world. I focus on taking hard problems from proof of concept to production at scale.

I've lived across three continents: born in Seoul, raised in Lagos, and schooled in California before earning dual degrees in Statistics and Data Science at UC Berkeley. It's made me adaptable and at ease working across cultures and contexts.

Dual B.A. in Statistics & Data Science, UC Berkeley

Journey

Seoul to Cambridge, and everywhere between

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  1. 1998

    Born in Seoul

    Seoul, South Korea

    Where it all started.

  2. 1999 – 2012

    Growing up in Lagos

    Lagos, Nigeria

    Grew up in Lagos, where I attended the American International School and picked up soccer and saxophone along the way.

  3. 2012 – 2016

    High school in California

    Irvine, California

    Moved to Southern California for high school at Arnold O. Beckman High School.

  4. 2016 – 2020

    UC Berkeley

    Berkeley, California

    Earned dual degrees in Statistics and Data Science, and came one class short of a History major, too.

  5. 2020 – 2022

    Life in San Francisco

    San Francisco, California

    Spent a couple of years in the city between graduating and joining Galatea, with a few research and teaching stints along the way.

  6. 2022 – Present

    Galatea Associates

    Cambridge, Massachusetts

    Joined as a software engineer and became a senior engineer and tech lead, building real-time decisioning systems for JPMorgan Chase's card-authorization platform.

Skills

Tools I work with

Languages

JavaPythonSQLR

Backend & Distributed Systems

Spring BootgRPCKafkaMicroservicesConcurrencySystem design

Cloud & DevOps

AWSKubernetesDockerIstioCI/CDObservability

Data & Storage

PostgreSQLCassandraSnowflakeRedisDB2

ML & Statistics

PyTorchTensorFlowscikit-learnpandasNumPy

Domain

PaymentsCard authorizationRisk & fraud decisioningCapital markets

Beyond work

Off the clock

Golf

Out on the course most weekends, working on my handicap.

Manchester United

A lifelong Manchester United supporter.

Painting & Art

I paint to unwind, a change of pace from a day in code.

Video Games

Mostly Paradox grand strategy like Europa Universalis V, plus League of Legends, where I've climbed to Diamond.

Building Things

I like building things outside of work, most recently a machine-learning bot that trades Kalshi's daily weather markets.

History

Especially the early modern period, and the empires and ideas that shaped the modern world.

Contact

Let's connect

Always happy to meet new people and talk shop, whether it's risk, tech, golf, or football. Feel free to reach out or connect.