Matthew Li

I'm currently studying computer science at the University of Waterloo, and have a strong interest in building impactful and challenging software.

A couple of transit related projects have recently been in the news, including CityNews, BlogTO, and Waterloo News.

In my free time, I enjoy reading, skateboarding, and playing basketball, which are often interests I incorporate into my projects.

Work

Hecaton
Software Engineer — financial portfolio management/forecasting + applied ai
FriedmannAI
Member of Technical Staff — financial portfolio management/forecasting + applied ai
Waterloo Data Science Club
Machine Learning Engineer — guardrail research + response, presented research at CUCAI
Events Coordinator — planning events and things of that nature
DevFortress
Software Engineer — developed ML training libraries + quality assurance for Shopify apps

Some projects

  1. i.
    sidewalk-shed — route planner through NYC under maximum scaffolding coverage (5k+ users)
    Maps a walking route through New York City under as much scaffolding as possible. Useful if it's raining and you forgot your umbrella or something.
  2. ii.
    cramrapp — group study session and progress tracking, competitive features coming (1k+ users, in progress)
    Study tracking platform for groups — log sessions, measure progress, and compete with friends. Competitive leaderboard features actively in development.
  3. iii.
    ttcleaderboard — live ranking of TTC streetcars by speed (40k+ users)
    Real-time leaderboard tracking the speed of every Toronto streetcar. Featured in CityNews, BlogTO, and Waterloo News.
  4. iv.
    protosynthesis — drag and drop workflow builder with 30+ templates, webhooks, and MCP connections (in progress)
    Visual workflow automation builder. 30+ prebuilt templates with support for webhooks and Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections. Actively in development.
  5. v.
    url shortener — production-grade url shortener with full observability stack
    Built with Nginx, Redis, Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, and Fail2Ban. Full metrics, logging, and rate limiting — proper infra, not a toy.