Hi, I'm Kevin Zhao Bao.
I'm a problem solver, engineering leader, and lifelong adventurer. I currently live in Bellevue, Washington, though I grew up mostly in Ellicott City, Maryland and root for New England sports teams (thanks to being born in Rhode Island). I attended Carnegie Mellon University and graduated at age 20 with dual degrees in computer science and economics.
Music, mountains, and computers effectively define who I am. I remember being fascinated by these topics ever since childhood. Why do certain chord progressions sound so good and can I discover a new one? How do I hike, climb, fly, ski, or photograph this mountain and explore its secrets? What can we achieve and build with computers for both work and play? This has led to a lifelong pursuit of mastering all three.
I began programming when I discovered TI Basic and Assembly on my calculator in middle school and this quickly became more interesting than most of my classes. Fortunately, many of my teachers were ok with this and actually encouraged me to explore this, even if it meant my math homework for the night would eventually reduce to pressing a couple of buttons on the calculator. I hope to inspire people around me in the same way those teachers and mentors did for me.
I started my software engineering career as an intern at Facebook pre-IPO in 2011. During that summer, I worked on the first version of Timeline (aka the Facebook profile) and tried to absorb as much as I could. I was lucky to witness how a technology company made bets that would shape our world in the years that followed. A year later, I started working on Windows user experience at Microsoft, first as an intern and then as a full time employee. My projects included the first run experience, the retail demo experience, and enabling ads in Windows as part of a transition to a free Windows business model. This provided me experience building product across the full stack from OS kernel to making things look nice in web browsers.
After putting ads in the start menu (yes, that was me) dampened my spirits, I decided to look for something completely different and that's when I dove into the startup world with Karat. I joined as the 2nd engineer and 8th overall employee and helped to build the Karat platform, invent interview engineering (interview methodology, questions, evaluation), and handle anything else that came up as one does at a startup. Over the course of five years, I wore many hats including late-night coding, hiring, product management, and people management. My proudest accomplishment was helping to build a team that can sustain itself successfully beyond my day-to-day tenure.
Most recently, I was an engineering manager at Assurance IQ, an insurtech company based out of Seattle. I joined to help build out the mortgage/personal loans business during COVID-era interest rates. By the end, I was accountable for our lead generation platform behind $400M in annual revenue (2023) across different kinds of insurance/financial products. I managed frontend, backend, and full stack teams.0000
I'm now working on the next thing... reach out if you'd like!
In my spare time, I enjoy being outdoors, playing music, and finding good food to eat. I prefer lead and sport climbing and am currently working on solidifying my ability to climb 5.12s; for boulders, I'm stuck somewhere around V7/8. In the winter, I try to spend nearly every weekend on the ski slopes and in the summer, you'll find me flying around on my paraglider. Music is a huge part of my life. If I'm not listening to something, I'm probably playing. Piano, flute, and guitar are my main instruments though I love to dabble and experiment with all kinds of sounds. I have perfect pitch so name any song and let's jam!
Some of my photos (mostly shot on my D750, now use a Z8):
