Hi, I'm Ernest
Software Developer Intern @ CPFB · Information Systems @ SMU
I build reliable software across the stack, from LLM testing and OCR pipelines to blockchain platforms and mobile apps.
About Me
I'm an Information Systems student at SMU who likes building software that people actually rely on, and making sure it holds up in production.
Right now I'm a Software Developer Intern at the Central Provident Fund Board, where I built the team's first automated regression suite for an internal LangGraph chatbot used by 100+ officers, and prototyped a board-wide data catalog in React and Flask.
Before that I shipped an OCR pipeline at ERA Realty that automated 11,000+ floor plans, and along the way I've won NUS FinTech Finalist & BGA Winner for a blockchain invoice-financing platform and placed top 8 of 50 at a quant trading hackathon.
Most at home in backend architecture, API design, and reliability, but happy anywhere across the stack.
Beyond Coding
Competitive Esports
CS:GO / Counter-Strike
Outside of code, I compete in CS:GO/CS2 at a high level as an anti-strat and analytical player. Reading an opponent's patterns under pressure and building counter-strategies as a team is the same muscle I use debugging systems and designing software, just with a shorter feedback loop.
Notable Achievements
+ Multiple ESEA Open placements with Serenity Esports
GitHub Stats
Experience
Software Developer Intern
May 2026 – PresentCentral Provident Fund Board (CPFB)
Singapore- •Built the team's first automated regression suite for AskPorto, an internal LangGraph chatbot used by 100+ CPFB officers, with LLM-as-a-judge scoring in DeepEval; now runs before each release
- •Replaced manual spot-checks with a 90-minute automated run scoring a 50-case golden set, 20 adversarial probes, and up to 800 production logs
- •Caught 3 jailbreaks that pushed AskPorto into disallowed responses, surfaced by the suite's adversarial probes
- •Built the React and Flask prototype for DictCentral, a board-wide data catalog replacing CPFB's end-of-life Microsoft Purview, with department-routed approvals and a duplicate-flagging import
Freelance Software Developer
Dec 2025 – PresentHuddle
Singapore- •Building a React Native app for sports academies to run classes, attendance, and enrollments; in client beta testing
- •Blocked tampered clients from reading other families' data with row-level security scoped to each of the 4 user types
- •Built a multi-step signup wizard where parents create and manage child-athlete profiles without separate accounts
Technology Intern
Jun 2025 – Sep 2025ERA Realty Network Pte Ltd
Singapore- •Reduced manual property-data entry by 100+ hours by building a Python OCR pipeline with RapidOCR and OpenCV that extracted structured attributes from 11,000+ floor plans
- •Cut pipeline runtime by 40%, from 5 hours to 3, with multithreaded processing and batch execution
- •Recovered text from blurry scans by detecting weak OCR passes and rerunning them with CLAHE and Otsu preprocessing
- •Reverse-engineered v1.0 of SALES+, ERA's legacy property system, and wrote the technical spec for its v2.0 rebuild
Projects
Quant / Trading
Crypto Trading Pipeline
An automated crypto trading pipeline of 6 microservices on AWS EC2, trading simulated funds live throughout the HKSG Quant Hackathon. I built the SOL and XRP strategy engines, sizing positions to volatility and pausing trades on negative news.
- ▸6 microservices trading simulated funds live on AWS EC2
- ▸Peaked top 8 of 50 mid-competition over the 7-day run
- ▸SOL & XRP strategy engines backed by 72 unit tests
FinTech / Blockchain
RLFactor
A blockchain invoice-financing platform that lets small businesses sell unpaid invoices to investors for early cash flow. I owned the blockchain core, automating the full invoice lifecycle on the XRP Ledger, from NFT minting and investor bidding to escrowed payouts.
- ▸Automated the invoice lifecycle across 7 XRPL transaction types
- ▸Owned the blockchain core (34 of 69 commits)
- ▸PostgreSQL row-locking (SELECT FOR UPDATE) prevents double-won auctions
More projects
Web Development
SMUVents
Event discovery platform for SMU students built during Web Dev II. Led the frontend architecture, mentored 2 teammates, and deployed for 200+ events across the semester.
Web Development
UpGrade
A full-stack marketplace matching tutors and tutees, with listings, note uploads, and a tutor review system. Built at the Hack In The Clouds hackathon.
Open Source
Terasology
Merged an open-source contribution to Terasology (an open-source voxel world engine in Java). My startup migration auto-renames legacy access-control files, preserving server allow/deny lists while removing a manual admin step. Added 3 edge-case unit tests.