Josephene Ginting
Education
- GPA: N/A
- Courses: Empirical Analysis, Macroeconomic Analysis, Computational Social Science
- GPA: 3.65
- Economics Courses: Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Econometrics, Game Theory, Behavioral Economics, International Finance and Macroeconomics, Public Finance, Development Economics, Decision Theory, Networks, Market Design
- Computer Science Courses: Analysis of Algorithms, Data Structures, Functional Programming, Computer Systems, Operating Systems, Databases, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Graphics, Web Design & Programming
- Mathematics Courses: Probability, Statistics, Discrete Mathematics, Calculus, Linear Algebra
- Other Relevant Courses: Information Ethics, Law, and Policy
Work Experience
I work on the FiscalNote application backend to help policy professionals manage legislative, economic, and stakeholder data for analysis and research.
- Developed scrapers, pipelines, systems, services, models, and tools for data review and enhancement.
- Work cross-functionally with the product team and policy analysts to release new datasets and features.
- Primarily use Python, PostgreSQL, SQLAlchemy, AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenAI, and LangChain.
Software Engineer II
- Developed a multi-agent smart scraping system using LangGraph to automate implementation and maintenance of brittle scrapers and quickly expand coverage of datasets.
- Developed a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) application that studies and analyzes a given market and provides insight into business trends, implications, and strategic recommendations, to allow faster expansion of geographic coverage for analysts.
- Designed and implemented a new pipeline to synchronize two large, complex databases that provide federal data to allow for the deprecation of old, unreliable software.
Software Engineer I
- Studied the effects of grassroots advocacy on legislator votes by conducting sentiment analyses on messages sent to legislators and relating them to floor votes using internal vote forecasting models.
- Rewrote our most high-profile social media scraper (Twitter) and migrated it to AWS.
- Implemented new memory-efficient tools and rewrote memory-intensive parts of our code to reduce scraper memory usage by more than 50%. I also developed tools to track memory usage.
- Implemented and released new Netherlands and Canadian data.
- Created a new proxy for our services using the SOCKS protocol to control outgoing IP addresses and prevent scrapers from being blocked.
Related Links
- Implemented fixed-effects and panel data methods to analyze determinants of growth variation across Indonesian provinces and wrote a research paper.
- Results centered on factors related to growth, economic structure, infrastructure, and foreign investments.
- Supervised by Prof. Eswar Prasad, Professor of Economics.
Related Links
- Aided over 500 students with conceptual and assignment issues through biweekly office hours and course discussion forum.
- Taught graph theory, social networks, game theory, markets and strategic interaction, information networks, and network dynamics.
- Evaluated and provided feedback on exams and weekly homework assignments.
- Worked with Prof. David Easley, Professor of Social Science, and Prof. Joseph Halpern, Professor of Computer Science.
Related Links
- Led business development including research, technology, operations, marketing, and partnerships for an online marketplace to help Indonesian youth succeed in getting into the best universities worldwide.
- Implemented the website on Wordpress.org with AWS, PHP, and MySQL.
- Reached over 1.8 million people by improving content and marketing strategy through consumer data analysis using Google Analytics.
Other Experience
- Selected as one of eight participants for an independent study program that explored the intersection of economics and technology and implemented a project in that area.
- Developed a data visualization tool for students’ college careers using D3.js, JavaScript, and HTML/CSS.
- Selected as one of 100 participants nationwide for an incubator program aiming to find a tech-enabled solution to gender inequality, particularly in the field of education.
- Led product and business development of Foorte+, an app that connects Indonesian youth with mentors for their educational and professional pursuits.