Journey
I started coding in 2014 while studying at university in Myanmar. In 2015, I moved to Linux as my daily environment, which shaped how I learn, work independently, and build with open-source tools.
In 2020, I joined Thibi as an intern and later became a Senior Full Stack Engineer. There, I worked with non-profits, journalists, and researchers — building platforms, data systems, and public tools. I took most projects from design to production and kept them running.
I’m now a Founding Engineer at NOSBAAN, building core systems and internal foundations as the product grows.
A thread that runs through most of this: my thesis in 2019 was on the limitations of unsupervised NLP for low-resource languages. MonOCR, which I built independently starting in 2025, is a direct answer to that — a production OCR system for Mon (mnw), a language with no existing dataset or toolchain.
"I had the privilege of working as a project manager for nearly five years on a very small team, where Zin Min served as the sole or lead developer. He was consistently two to three steps ahead of his responsibilities and approached unexpected challenges with enthusiasm and professionalism. I especially appreciate his patience and his ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly to non-technical team members. I’m confident he would be an invaluable asset to any team."
Experience
Founding Engineer
NOSBAANFirst engineering hire. Designed the platform architecture from scratch — a distributed internal operations system now in production, automating core operations across booking and property management. The core is an event-driven pipeline: events come in, get acknowledged right away, queue up, and are processed by Cloud Run workers in the background. Long-running tasks aren't cut off by serverless time limits, and nothing gets dropped when traffic spikes. Compute-intensive tasks (image optimization, document compression) run as independent Go microservices behind a Redis job queue with exponential backoff and idempotency guarantees. Load-tested on base infrastructure: 50+ req/s, 25,000+ operations/hour, avg <200ms, P95 <1.5s at peak, 0.00% error rate. Stack: TypeScript, Go, Python, PostgreSQL, Redis, Cloudflare, Google Cloud, Vercel.
Senior Full Stack Developer
ThibiMigrated a legacy high-load system to leaner infrastructure, reducing complexity and cutting costs by 33%. Cleaned up data pipelines and improved the backup and recovery setup. Defined shared error-handling patterns and service conventions that the team adopted across new projects.
Full Stack Developer
ThibiBuilt civic data platforms, GIS systems, research dashboards, and public-facing REST APIs for non-profits, journalists, and research institutions across Southeast Asia. Worked closely with project managers, researchers, and NGO stakeholders on a small team. Took most projects from stack selection through to production and kept them running. Mentored three engineers who moved into senior roles. Stack: React, Next.js, SvelteKit, Node.js, PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Python, AWS, Linode, GitLab CI/CD.
Education
Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology
Graduation delayed due to coup; degree awarded Feb 16, 2025
Technology Evolution
Adopted TypeScript and Go for production services. Full-stack across SvelteKit and Next.js for web; Python for data pipelines and ML training; Go for backend APIs. Added on-device inference — training with PyTorch, exporting to ONNX, deploying across Wasm, NNAPI, and CoreML/ANE runtimes. Native mobile with Jetpack Compose and SwiftUI.
Completed thesis on the accuracy rates and limitations of unsupervised learning algorithms in NLP. Began working primarily with Node.js, React, and React Native for cross-platform applications.
Expanded to Java EE, Spring Boot, and Android development. Started working with MongoDB and PostgreSQL. Picked up Python for AI and machine learning coursework.
Started using Git for version control. Learned web development with vanilla JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, and SQLite. Moved to Java SE for desktop applications.
Started with C and C++ during university. Switched to Linux as my primary operating system and began exploring open-source development.