Peter Zhu

Software Developer

About Me

Hey there! I’m a Ruby Core Committer and Senior Software Developer at Shopify.

Check out my blog for notes I take along the way!

When I’m not writing code (or blog posts), I like to take photos. Follow me on Instagram and 500px.

Experience

Shopify

Senior Software Developer - Ruby Infrastructure

Ottawa, ON

May 2020 - Present

The Ruby Programming Language

Ruby Core Committer

March 2021 - Present

  • Member of the core team of the Ruby Programming Language. Working on performance, fixing bugs, and general maintenance of the Ruby Programming Language.

Shopify

Production Engineering Intern - Ruby and Rails Infrastructure

Ottawa, ON

May 2019 - August 2019

  • Experimented and implemented static type checking for Shopify’s core Ruby on Rails monolith system using the Sorbet static typechecker, which was able to find over 30 bugs in the system.
  • Contributed to various open and closed source tools to ease transition into Sorbet. Projects include a runtime typechecker for Sorbet, RBI (Ruby Interface) file generator, and Rubocop lint rules for Sorbet.
  • Contributed to the popular open-sourced web framework Ruby on Rails, focusing on the asset storage component, Active Storage.

Shopify

Privacy/Trust RnD Developer Intern

Ottawa, ON

May 2018 - August 2018

  • Contributed to kafka-scrubber, a Go project that obfuscates PII (personally identifiable information) from Kafka topics before data is placed in long term storage.
  • Designed, prototyped, and implemented a security-oriented microservice platform called minerva-bot. This platform is architected in a component based Ruby on Rails architecture, allowing for loosely coupled components while decreasing development time. The bot performs various services for com- pliance purposes, along with automating tasks such as account permission requests and multi-factor authentication resets.

Shopify

Security DevOps Engineer Intern

Ottawa, ON

June 2017 - September 2017

  • Worked with Ruby on Rails to fix security vulnerabilities in critical components of Shopify, including authentication and API.
  • Rebooted an internal project at Shopify called push-scraper, which detects secrets (such as API keys/tokens, passwords, etc.) that get accidentally committed onto GitHub.

Education

University of Toronto

Bachelor of Science, Computer Science

Toronto, ON

2017 - 2023

  • GPA: 3.87/4.0.

Conference Talks

Finding Memory Leaks in the Ruby Ecosystem

2024

Rails and the Ruby Garbage Collector: How to Speed Up Your Rails App

2023

1.5 is the Midpoint Between 0 and Infinity

2022

Automatically Find Memory Leaks in Native Gems

2022

Optimizing Ruby's Memory Layout: Variable Width Allocation

2021

Certifications & Awards

Canadian Computing Olympiad Bronze Medallist

May 2017

  • Invited to the University of Waterloo to compete in the CCO as one of the top 30 contestants (out of more than 3000) of the Canadian Computing Contest (CCC).

Oracle Certified Professional, Java SE7 Programmer

May 2016

  • License: 240037109OCPJSE7

Oracle Certified Associate, Java SE7 Programmer

July 2015

  • License: 240037109OCAJSE7

CompTIA A+ CE

September 2015 - September 2018

  • License: 6VJSGELG1KQ4QRWL