Home · Ilie-Daniel Apostol

About

I'm a Master's student in Computer Science at ETH Zürich, majoring in Data Management Systems with a minor in Machine Learning. Before that, I did my Bachelor's in Computer Science at the University of Bucharest, graduating 5th out of 250+ students with a 9.79/10 GPA.

My internships have mostly kept me low in the stack — a caching layer inside Azure Storage at Microsoft, kernel-level driver work at Bitdefender, backend systems at Bending Spoons — and I'm now doing trading-adjacent data platform work at DRW in London. Outside of work, I compete in and coach competitive programming, and play a bit of chess and tennis when I get the chance.

Experience

1. DRW — Software Developer Intern London, June–Sept 2026. Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities team, working on the internal Data Platform. Stack: Python.

2. ETH Zürich — MSc Computer Science Sept 2025–Aug 2027 (expected). Major in Data Management Systems, minor in Machine Learning.

3. Microsoft — Software Engineering Intern Bucharest, Jul–Sept 2025. Azure Storage Index Management & Garbage Collection team. Designed and implemented a low-level caching layer in a critical path of one of the world's largest distributed storage systems — the resulting feature was projected to save on the order of millions in capex.

4. Bitdefender — Software Engineering Intern Bucharest, Jul–Sept 2024. Core Security Team, including kernel-level driver work. Shipped IP exclusion for remote-control scanning and driver exclusions for debugging within GravityZone's ATC module, impacting 5M+ users.

5. Bending Spoons — Software Engineering Intern Milan, Jul–Oct 2023. Monetization Tech team — subscription/transaction handling, backend latency work, and monitoring tooling across 10+ internal projects.

6. University of Bucharest — BSc Computer Science Oct 2022–June 2025. GPA 9.79/10, 5th of 250+ students. Performance class; Merit Scholarship all three years.

Awards

♕ ICPC World Finals, Luxor Honorable Mention, 2022–2023 season, among 121 teams that advanced from 70,000+ participants.

♕ ICPC Southeastern Europe Regional 13th place & Mention (2023); 10th place, Mention, and qualification to the European Championship (2024).

♕ Romanian National Olympiad in Informatics 7 Gold Medals, including two 1st places (2015–2022).

♕ Tuymaada International Olympiad Gold Medal, 1st place, and the “Perfect Result of Day One” mention letter.

♕ Balkan Olympiad in Informatics Bronze Medal, 2021, representing Romania.

♕ International Zhautykov Olympiad — CS 2 Silver, 1 Bronze (2020–2022).

♕ Romanian Masters of Informatics 3 Silver Medals (2019–2021).

♕ International Autumn Tournament in Informatics 3 Bronze Medals (2018–2020).

Projects

YoutubeSummarizer

A full-stack app that extracts captions from YouTube videos and generates summaries with ChatGPT, refining them based on user feedback with a regenerate option.

Angular · C# ASP.NET · Python · PostgreSQL · Amazon SQS · Docker

PICR Text Editor

A Vim-inspired terminal text editor in C++. Prevents multiple processes from touching the same file, auto-creates files as needed, and supports customizable auto-save across three modes for navigation, editing, and command execution.

C++ · SFML · FTXUI

Teaching & Volunteering

Mentor & Tutor, European Girls Olympiad in Informatics (2023–2024) — mentored the Romanian EGOI 2023 team to a gold and a bronze medal; helped run Girls Programming Camp 2023 Romania for 12 students.
CS Tutor, “Hai la Olimpiada!”, Noua ne pasă Foundation powered by eMAG (2023–2024) — prepared students who went on to win 2 gold, 4 silver medals, and 1 training-camp qualification at the national olympiad.
Scientific Committee Member, SEPI (2023–present) — wrote and evaluated tasks for 5th & 10th-grade regional/national informatics contests.
Scientific Committee Member, Info(1)Cup (2020–2023) — created tasks for the international CS competition for middle schoolers.
CS Teacher, Clubul Copiilor Sector 1 (2019–2022) — co-founded a performance class teaching C++ to 30+ students, several of whom went on to win national olympiad medals.

Skills & Elsewhere

Languages: C++, Python, C, C#, Java, Go, TypeScript, SQL, Haskell

Frameworks: React, Angular, .NET, Qt, Docker, Git, Terraform, GCP, AWS, Azure

Spoken: Romanian (native), English (C1, TOEFL 103), French (B1), German (beginner)

Also: a poster at the Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School (“Are modern text encoders more robust to textual noise?”), the First-Year Trading and Technology Program at Jane Street's London office, and a discrete math course at UChicago's Summer Immersion Program.

I am Daniel Apostol.