Jose Silva

University of Michigan

B.S.E. Computer Science · Michigan LEAD Scholar

• Coursework in data structures and algorithms, computer security, computer organization, software engineering, data-oriented programming, and web accessibility.
• Mathematics through linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and honors statistics and data analysis.

Leidos

Software Development Intern

• Enhance enterprise Angular and TypeScript applications serving 10,000+ monthly users, shipping requested features and resolving production issues in existing components.
• Build frontend functionality and integrate backend services for an AI-powered assistant inside a flagship enterprise application, delivering intelligent user workflows.
• Develop Spring Boot REST APIs against datastores managing billions of records, on AWS (EC2, S3, IAM), collaborating across teams in an Agile environment.

Round 2 Ai

Software Development Intern

• Engineered 100+ PostgreSQL views denormalizing relational customer, vendor, invoice, and financial data into shapes the frontend could query for analytics and reporting.
• Built a real-time analytics dashboard in React and TypeScript with 12+ interactive visualizations surfacing key business metrics.
• Optimized SQL queries and worked directly with engineers and beta clients — running demos and translating feedback into production-ready MVP features.

National Security Agency

Technology Intern

• Supported senior executive staff in a TS/SCI environment — coordinating schedules, securing conference space, and organizing directorate-wide town halls.
• Built an internal workflow that streamlined email management, improving communication efficiency by over 25%.
• Completed a Full Scope Polygraph investigation during tenure.

Semestra.ai

AI course advising, without the hallucinations

• Built a vendor-adapter ingestion layer that normalizes catalogs from CourseLeaf, Acalog, Kuali, and Banner into a single validated schema, cross-checking extractions against live schedule feeds to flag conflicts rather than guess.
• Modeled degree requirements and prerequisite logic as a constraint satisfaction problem solved with OR-Tools CP-SAT — every multi-semester plan ships with a derivation for each recommendation, which eliminates hallucinated course suggestions outright.

Research & Publication Aggregator

Change detection across ~200 research sites

• Built a configurable monitoring system that scrapes nearly 200 university research sites and Google Scholar profiles, detecting new publications via SHA-256 page hashing with JSON-persisted snapshots and duplicate detection.
• Kept multi-site crawling stable at scale with request throttling and structured logging.
• Assembled an aggregation pipeline that extracts page content, generates summaries with the Claude API, and consolidates new research into HTML and plaintext email digests.

Shiftmates

A puzzle-platformer where only one coworker moves through time

• Designed a two-body mechanic in which only the worker you're driving moves through time. Switch, and the other falls asleep exactly where they are — mid-jump, if that's where you left them — becoming a solid platform to stand on and leap from. Wake them and they finish the same arc at the same speed, as though no time had passed. Get either one into the elevator to clear the level.
• Specified a freeze that locks a worker's body in place while keeping it collidable, rather than switching physics off and dropping them through the floor. Stored the exact velocity and restored it on waking in a particular order, so the engine doesn't quietly zero it out — that ordering is what makes "no time passed" hold up in midair.
• Tuned a movement controller that accelerates toward a target speed instead of setting speed straight from the keys, so a worker woken mid-flight gets steered rather than wiped. Layered in the forgivenesses players feel without noticing: variable jump height, coyote time (a brief grace period to still jump just after walking off a ledge) and a jump buffer (a jump pressed a moment before landing still fires).
• Structured the systems around a publish/subscribe event bus — worker switched, button pressed, level complete, worker died — so nothing references anything else directly, and paired buttons to barriers by channel number so a single level can run several independent puzzles at once. Shipped nine single-screen levels across 13 single-purpose C# scripts and 7 reusable prefabs.
• Themed every element as office furniture doing a platformer's job: paperclip-chain barriers held open by a red button, staple guns that slam shut and fire a fatal staple, and pen platforms that slide back and forth. Kept the rules consistent rather than convenient — staples kill a sleeping worker too, so freezing is never a shield, and a pen platform refuses to carry one, leaving them hanging as it slides out from under them.

Unsigned builds. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time — Gatekeeper blocks a plain double-click.

Metroid (NES), Rebuilt from Scratch

Weapon systems · authenticity parity · bug triage

• Recreated the 1986 NES original in Unity and C# with a three-person team, working from some of the game's original assets. Every system behind them — movement, weapons, enemies, world state — was written from scratch against observed behavior.
• Implemented the core weapon logic: beam and missile firing, mode switching with HUD events, and the projectile lifecycle. Rate of fire is gated the way the original gates it — a three-shot on-screen cap shared across beams and missiles, so you cannot fire again until an earlier shot expires or connects.
• Ran authenticity checks against the NES game and tuned behavior in its units rather than approximations: the default beam travels a third of a screen, the Long Beam flies until it leaves the view, and missiles cross the full screen at a slower speed than the beam.
• Owned bug testing and fixes across the team's systems through to the gold build.
• Shipped an original level with the team, built around a custom grappling hook that fires straight up, carries the player along the rope, and swings to build horizontal momentum — with metal tiles that refuse the hook, to make players read the environment.

Unsigned builds. On macOS, right-click the app and choose Open the first time — Gatekeeper blocks a plain double-click.