Hwi Ahn
Senior Backend Engineer
LinkedIn
GitHubSoftware architect (PhD, KAIST) and engineer with 10 years of experience in high-performance backend systems. Expert in designing and developing scalable, reliable, and high-performance distributed systems, with a proven track record of deploying and operating services within cloud-native environments.
Software Architecture & Backend
Architecture design based on KAIST Ph.D. and experience in building large-scale distributed systems using Go and Node.js.
Security & Blockchain
Development of platforms centering on data integrity and security, performing senior engineering practices.
Cloud Native Operations
Hands-on experience in service deployment and operation in AWS EKS (Kubernetes) and Docker-based environments.
Technical Skills
Backend Development
- • Go-based server development (Echo, Gin, Fiber, net/http, Chi)
- • Node.js-based server development (Fastify, Express, Koa, Nest.js)
- • Backend architecture design based on software architecture theory
- • Proficient in REST API, gRPC, and JSON RPC server development
Database
- • Design and integration of PostgreSQL and SQLite model structures
- • Design and integration of MongoDB, Redis, and Firebase model structures
Deployment & Operations
- • Deployment on AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Docker-based On-Premise servers, and Vercel
- • Development of CI/CD pipelines for GitLab, GitHub, and Google Cloud Platform
Frontend
- • Development of React-based web applications (Vite-based SPA, Next.js-based SSR)
- • Development of React Native-based cross-platform mobile applications
Professional Experience
Sr. Security/Blockchain Engineer
42dot • Security/Blockchain Platform Team @Security Intelligence Group
2024.01 - Present
Responsible for designing and developing security platform architecture to provide storage with guaranteed data integrity as a backend developer.
Design, Development, and Operation of Security Platform for Data Integrity
Designed, developed, and operated a security platform ensuring data integrity, consisting of over 25 servers in an AWS EKS-based cloud-native environment, utilizing a private blockchain platform as a core component.
- • Achieved more than 3x TPS performance compared to the initial stage through nonce management optimization and advanced design, establishing it as a core internal security infrastructure and stably integrating it with multiple internal systems.
- • Developed real-time monitoring systems and failover scenarios for stable operations.
Participation in Open Source Security Vulnerability Analysis System Development
Building and managing vulnerability databases, and establishing/operating servers for periodic data synchronization with external vulnerability databases.
- • Built and operated a backend system that stably synchronizes and processes more than 3 types of external vulnerability databases, including large-scale data of 130 million rows based on BigQuery.
CTO, Full Stack Engineer
Bigpicture Lab
2018.05 - 2023.12
As CTO and Full-Stack Engineer, led the development of talent evaluation/verification solutions and anonymous community services, growing the development team to up to 10 members and contributing to initial investment and selection for the TIPS program. Additionally, led 5 years of development collaboration with ETRI/KOMSCO.
Talent Evaluation & Verification Solution Development
Design and development of Go-based RESTful API, deployment on GCP Cloud Run. Designed complex asynchronous communications based on state diagrams.
- • Led the design and development of RESTful API servers written in Go, and deployed/operated them on Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run).
- • Designed complex asynchronous communication between applicants, evaluators, and respondents based on state diagrams, and achieved system stability by implementing all server APIs as stateless.
Anonymous Community Service Development for Local Communities
Blockchain-based anonymous authentication community service using personal wallets, implementing reward systems based on activity and administrator customization features.
- • Utilized for Daejeon City's resident autonomy for 1 year (2021).
- • Design and operation of backend platforms based on Microservices Architecture (MSA).
Blockchain-based Personal Data Trading System Development (Collaboration with ETRI)
Development of DID authentication and ERC20/NFT token-based technologies.
- • Demonstrated architecture design expertise by detailing the design and implementation of complex asynchronous distributed communication structures between individual servers.
- • Utilized Node.js and SQLite3.
Middleware Development for Connecting Heterogeneous Blockchains in NFT Trust Verification Platform (Collaboration with KOMSCO)
Developed middleware supporting validity verification by reading NFT data from different blockchains. Integrated with other servers and databases within KOMSCO's related platform.
- • Designed a highly scalable architecture based on the Factory pattern.
- • Automated testing based on Mock objects and Dependency Injection.
CEO, Software Developer
Nevmine Co., Ltd.
2016.03 - 2018.05
Responsible for Java application development and research.
- • Developed application algorithms using Java and Java Bytecode Instrumentation programs using the ASM library.
- • Developed multi-platform applications using Electron.
Intern
NAVER • Graduate Industry-Academic Collaboration Internship Program
2012.07 - 2012.08
Participated in the development of the version control system NFORGE 4 (now Yobi) as a Java web server developer.
Education
Ph.D. in Computer Science
School of Computing, KAIST
2012.03 - 2024.08
Software Architecture Reconstruction Research: A study on methods to reconstruct execution-view software architecture models from source code and execution logs.
Key Publications:
- • H. Ahn, S. Kang, and S. Lee, "Reconstruction of an execution architecture view by identifying mapping rules for connectors," Journal of Systems and Software, vol. 220, no. 2, Feb. 2025(SCIE Journal)[Link]
- • H. Ahn, S. Kang, and S. Lee, "Reconstruction of execution architecture view using dependency relationships and execution traces," in SAC2018, Pau, France, April 9 - 13, 2018[Link]
M.S. in MSIT-SE (Software Engineering)
School of Computing, KAIST / Carnegie Mellon University
2010.08 - 2012.02
CMU-KAIST Dual Degree Master's Program. Specialized in software architecture, processes, and analysis.
Key Publications:
- • H. Ahn and S. Kang, "Analysis of Software Product Line Architecture Representation Mechanisms," in SERA2011, Maryland, USA, August 10 - 12, 2011[Link]
B.S. in Computer Science
KAIST
2005.02 - 2010.08