Aaron Tan

+1 (613) 618-7628 hi@aaronhktan.com aaronhktan.com cheeseisdisgusting linkedin.com/in/aaronhktan

22nd May 2018

Scribd Inc
#2400 333 Bush Street
San Francisco, CA 94104

Dear Recruiter,

Thank you for the opportunity to apply for the position of Software Developer Co-op at your San Francisco
location. As a musician, I’ve often used Scribd to find sheet music; the fact that I can search and download
millions of files rather than lugging around heavy sheet music books has been a boon to my ability to play music.
While I haven’t worked professionally on the web, I can learn quickly and get up to speed as the job requires.

Before going into my previous internship, I had never had coursework in C, nor any professional experience with
operating systems. And yet, I had the opportunity to work on Fitbit’s software development kit, writing C code
to enable a JavaScript runtime on a wearable device with 2.2 megabytes of on-chip RAM. I contributed to the
firmware side in C, wrote JavaScript apps for the platform, and built features in our test automation suite with
Python and C++. And since the SDK is an effort that bridges multiple, cross-functional teams from firmware to
mobile to backend, communication was a key strength I developed during my co-op at Fitbit. All of these skills,
in the first co-op I had ever done.

I also have little projects outside of work. I’ve written apps with 5,500+ downloads each for the Pebble
smartwatch, with the watch side written in C running on a device with less than 64kB of usable RAM,
communicating to a phone companion running JavaScript. Another project that I’ve done recently is a light-up
umbrella, responding to movement: it involved the Onion Omega2 mini-computer and an Arduino Uno R3,
communicating over I2C with an accelerometer, gyroscope, and the programmable LEDs. Finally, I’ve recently
written a program to read song metadata and find lyrics in Python, experimenting with object-oriented
programming, multithreading, and creating a GUI with Qt. Find links on my résumé and GitHub!

Beyond programming experience, I have been able to contribute to areas of interest with a multitudinous set of
transferrable skills. I’m a great communicator: I created and defended cases with my debate partner, and we
were crowned provincial bilingual champions by the Ontario Student Debating Union. I’m a self-starter and team
player: I negotiated the re-institution of the 872 Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron marching band, then led
that band to 2nd place in a provincial music festival. See my attached résumé for more information.

I would be honoured to be part of the backend/web team at Scribd. My co-op term falls on Fall 2018, which
makes it perfect for September-December. I would love to talk in more detail in an interview. Feel free to call at
+1 (613) 618-7628 or email me at hi@aaronhktan.com.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Aaron Tan