About me

Hello! My name is Brandon Zhou, and I am a fourth year student at the University of Waterloo. I am majoring in Computer Science at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science. Currently, I'm actively seeking a full-time position in Software Development starting May 2026. Feel free to reach out to me through the Contact section!

Fun fact: I attempted to transfer to CS 6 times starting in my 1B term, and finally got in after 3A! Woohoo!

What i'm doing

  • Software Development

    Developing versatile and scalable applications, from conception to deployment.

  • Machine Learning

    Pioneering predictive models and intelligent systems with state-of-the-art algorithms.

  • Data Engineering

    Building and maintaining resilient data pipelines for seamless information flow.

  • Data Visualization

    Distilling complex datasets into clear, insightful visual representations.

Recommendations

  • Costin

    Costin

    Brandon delivered high-quality code, analysis, explanations and solution recommendations - demonstrating a strong understanding of data science methodologies and techniques.
    Brandon is the third co-op student we have been fortunate to have on our team in this role, and while only being Brandon's first co-op experience, we can attest that he has contributed the most of these three and we feel justified and appreciative to recommend an Outstanding rating. Brandon has the technical ability, drive and necessary ingredients to become a stellar Data Scientist in his future, we wish him the best.

  • Anu

    Anu

    Brandon was the best co-op student I had at Jana. His R&D skills and relentless contributions to our data development process improvements are highly commendable. He's also an innovator. Thanks to his suggestions and hard work I managed to close some of our outstanding technical debts. I wish I had him for another term and I am always happy to have him in my team.

  • Robert

    Robert

    Brandon has demonstrated an exceptional level of performance that far exceeds expectations in all areas of their role. Their ability to deliver high-quality work with outstanding attention to detail, efficiency, and innovation has significantly contributed to the success of our team. They consistently take initiative, go beyond their job description, and proactively seek ways to improve processes and outcomes. Their strong analytical skills and problem-solving mindset have set them apart as a truly invaluable team member.

  • Brent

    Brent

    Brandon consistently demonstrated the ability to deliver throughout the two terms. He never turns down challenging tasks. He also demonstrated consistent growth in business understanding that allowed him to take on more and more independent tasks.

Daniel lewis
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Daniel lewis

Richard was hired to create a corporate identity. We were very pleased with the work done. She has a lot of experience and is very concerned about the needs of client. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, ullamcous cididt consectetur adipiscing elit, seds do et eiusmod tempor incididunt ut laborels dolore magnarels alia.

Experience

Education

  1. University of Waterloo

    09/2021 — 04/2026

    Candidate for Bachelor of Computer Science
    Cumulative GPA: ~92%

  2. St. Jude's Academy

    02/2020 — 06/2021

    Graduated with an Ontario Secondary School Diploma (OSSD) with an average of 98%.

Academic Experience

  1. Research Assistant @ University of Waterloo

    2024, 2025, 2026 Part-time

    Network Traffic Classification Web Fingerprinting Attacks Information Retrieval

Professional Experience

  1. Backend Developer @ Dawson Partners

    01/2025 — 12/2025 Co-op, Part-time

    Backend Systems Engineering Financial ETL Pipelines Database & ORM Optimization Automated Testing CI/CD Payment Orchestration Systems Performance & Latency Optimization

  2. Data Scientist @ Honda Canada

    05/2024 — 08/2024 Co-op

    Machine Learning Feature Engineering XGBoost Modeling Master Data Management Fuzzy Matching Algorithms Model Deployment MLOps Business Verification KYB Systems

  3. Data Engineer @ JANA Corporation

    09/2023 — 12/2023 Co-op

    ETL Pipeline Engineering Workflow Orchestration Infrastructure as Code Cloud Data Warehousing Schema Evolution & Integration Secure Cloud DevOps Dockerized Data Systems

  4. Data Scientist @ Septodont

    09/2022 — 04/2023 Co-op

    Customer Retention & Forecasting Machine Learning Model Evaluation XGBoost Deployment Predictive Analytics Automated ML Pipelines Feature Engineering Azure ML Infrastructure

My skills

  • Python
    85%
  • C++
    79%
  • Java
    70%
  • Scala
    72%
  • SQL
    80%
  • Git
    80%

View My Resume

Portfolio

Category Name Description Link
Data Science Netflix Subscription Fee Analysis
  • Analyzed monthly subscription fees data in multiple countries and visualized them in regard to 3 features using distribution plot, scatter plot and heatmap.
  • Computed correlation between variables and recognized factors that significantly affects subscription type of users.
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Data Science Flight Price Data Analysis and Prediction
  • Conducted Exploratory Data Analysis with 8+ diagrams on 300k+ rows of flight data and identified the correlation between flight price and 6 relevant features.
  • Extracted insights from the price trends and feature importance that would affect the flight price to guide decision making for clients.
  • Applied imputation techniques to deal with missing values by filling in the mean value.
  • Leveraged Decision Tree and Random Forest models to predict flight price and realized 93% of model accuracy.
 N/A
Data Science Product Purchase Likelihood
  • For confidentiality reasons and NDAs, information about this project will not be displayed on this website. However, there may be a description of this project on my resume. Please send me a form under Contact tab to get my resume if you are interested. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
 N/A
Data Science Improving OEE for Operations Filling Area
  • For confidentiality reasons and NDAs, information about this project will not be displayed on this website. However, there may be a description of this project on my resume. Please send me a form under Contact tab to get my resume if you are interested. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
 N/A
Data Science Prospect Customers Analysis
  • For confidentiality reasons and NDAs, information about this project will not be displayed on this website. However, there may be a description of this project on my resume. Please send me a form under Contact tab to get my resume if you are interested. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
 N/A
Data Science Student Performance Prediction
  • Conducted exploratory data analysis using various chart types (e.g. line chart, pie chart, violin chart) to gain insights into student performance data, and identified key factors affecting academic achievement, enabling more informed modeling decisions.
  • Developed and implemented a linear regression model to predict students' math scores based on relevant variables, achieving a high R-squared score of 87%.
 N/A
Data Science Cancer Type Classification
  • Conducted in-depth data exploration and analysis on a cancer patient dataset, visualizing the distribution and correlation matrices of continuous variables to identify key features and relationships.
  • Derived new attributes through feature engineering, increasing the accuracy by approximately 1%.
  • Utilized XGBoost, to accurately classify malignant and non-malignant cancer cases with an optimized hyperparameter set obtained through random search. Evaluated the model using learning curve, ROC-AUC Curve and confusion matrix.
 N/A
Data Science Software Development
  • This is a course project for CS 246 offered in Spring 2023, with a final project score 102/100.
  • Due to university policy (UW Policy #71), code submitted for academic credit or created in response to an assignment problem cannot be published online. However, you can view our design documentation on my GitHub.
 N/A

Publications

  • One task to rule them all: A closer look at traffic classification generalizability

    Elham Akbari, Zihao Zhou, Mohammad Ali Salahuddin, Noura Limam, Raouf Boutaba, Bertrand Mathieu, Stephanie Moteau, Stephane Tuffin

    July 2025 · [arXiv]

Courses

Here's a list of courses I've taken throughout my time at the University of Waterloo. I've included it to give a clearer picture of the topics I've studied and the areas I've built a foundation in. If you're looking for course notes, summaries, or study materials I've put together, you can visit this site. I hope it's helpful, and if you have any questions about a specific course, feel free to reach out !

Term Course Code Course Name

Contact

Contact Form

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