Kevin Xu PortraitπŸ‘‹

Hello, I'm Kevin. I'm a 4th year CS student at Northeastern and also varsity a track & field athlete. I'm obsessed with building. I like owning projects end-to-end: shaping the idea, writing the code, and iterating until it's actually good. Outside the keyboard, I'm usually training, competing, or recharging with games.

About me

My journey into computer science started in an unexpected place: Minecraft redstone. I loved pushing the game to its limits β€” building machines, automating farms, and treating each world like a sandbox for systems design. Eventually, I stopped just caring that it worked and started wondering why it worked… and how I could build things like that outside of Minecraft.

That curiosity led me to my first Scratch games, where I got hooked on the feeling that code is basically a superpower: you imagine something, and then you can make it real. Since then, I’ve loved computer science for the same reason β€” it’s equal parts creativity and logic, and it gives you the freedom to build whatever you want, from small tools to full products.

These days, I like working end-to-end β€” building UIs, wiring up backends, and shipping things that feel clean and reliable. You can find the tools I reach for most in the Skills section below.

My projects

Blockstart

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With my roommate, I worked as a full-stack developer on this project for a few months. High school athletes can use our tool to browse and find the best colleges for them.

  • React
  • HTML
  • Java
  • Spring
  • AWS

Reinforcement Snake

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A model that starts by making random moves in Snake, but learns over time using machine learning principles to become an expert at the game.

  • Python
  • PyTorch
  • Matplotlib
  • CUDA

Seam Carver

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My favorite class project, which can visualize the least interesting 'seam', and removes it from the image. Can also reverse/pause the program and show the image grayscale.

  • Java

TheFarm

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Developed a full-stack (MVP) farm management dashboard designed to track livestock. Front end: react/tailwind/framer-motiom. Back end: Next.js, dockerized psql server.

  • Next.js
  • NextAuth
  • React
  • Tailwind
  • Framer Motion
  • Docker
  • PostgreSQL

Race Ready

Collaborated with a team to develop 'RaceReady', an event organization app for races, featuring a robust database, REST API, and Dockerized services for seamless integration and functionality.

  • Docker
  • MySQL
  • DataGrip
  • Flask
  • Appsmith

My skills

My experience

Front-End Intern β€” Klaviyo

Boston, MA

Shipped Identity Resolution (email-typo merge) in React/TypeScript behind Statsig feature flags, tracking usage in Heap and driving 194k+ duplicate profile merges. Built UI for custom user roles (read/export/edit) with reusable access-control components and fixed 10+ permission bugs. Cut team-owned Sentry errors by 50% and expanded Cypress E2E coverage for key flows.

Jul 2025 – Dec 2025

DevOps Intern β€” Wolters Kluwer

Waltham, MA

Migrated a legacy CDN to Azure Front Door + Blob Storage using Terraform, reducing CDN costs by ~85% (~$11k/month). Automated host management and audits with Python + Ansible and built patch management workflows across Windows/Linux. Deployed Zabbix to 50+ hosts, routed alerts to Slack, and used ArgoCD + Jenkins to redeploy apps with expiring secrets.

Jul 2024 – Dec 2024

Teaching Assistant β€” Fundamentals of Computer Science 2

Boston, MA

Held 4 weekly office hours supporting Java programming, debugging, and software design. Graded assignments/exams for ~70 students in an accelerated section and delivered written feedback on code quality. Led weekly labs for ~30 students covering data structures and testing concepts with live coding.

Jan 2024 – Apr 2025

Northeastern University

Boston, MA

B.S. Computer Science (concentration in AI), GPA 4.0 β€” Expected May 2026.

Sep 2022 – May 2026

Contact me

Please contact me directly at xu.kev@northeastern.edu or through this form