Brian Cochran

software engineer. junior at Illinois, CS + Economics.

Three internships in, I’ve worked on fraud detection and SDKs at Synchrony, built mobile features for 40,000+ people at iQor, and deployed LLM features at Cal AI before its $100M acquisition. I also build iOS apps my friends actually use.

See the work ↓Résumé ↗GitHub ↗LinkedIn ↗
Brian Cochran
hi from Champaign, IL
01

About

the student

1 / 3

I study CS + Economics at Illinois, Class of 2028.

Every semester since freshman year I've been shipping software somewhere real: a startup that got acquired for $100M+, a BPO with 40,000 employees, and now a Fortune 200 bank.

3.91 GPA, class of '28

the toolbox ↓

Languages

  • TypeScript
  • JavaScript
  • Python
  • Java
  • Kotlin
  • C/C++
  • SQL

Full-Stack

  • React
  • Next.js
  • Node.js
  • FastAPI
  • REST APIs

Mobile

  • React Native
  • Expo
  • iOS
  • Android
  • Supabase
  • RevenueCat
  • Appium

Data & Infra

  • Neo4j
  • ChromaDB
  • PostgreSQL
  • Spark
  • Hadoop
  • AWS
  • Docker
02

Experience

  1. Jan 2026 – Present

    Synchrony · Software Engineering Intern

    Fraud graphs, payment SDKs, and AI codegen agents at a Fortune 200 bank.

    • Built AI code-gen agents automating SDK implementation from Jira ticket to Bitbucket PR, cutting manual effort 60%
    • Shipped payment, card-access, and subscription modules in an SDK powering 5 teams' apps used by millions
    • Architected graph-based fraud detection in Neo4j, part of a $130M+ annual fraud-prevention run rate
    • Built distributed data-ingestion pipelines on Apache Spark and Hadoop feeding the fraud graph on AWS
    • Neo4j
    • Spark
    • Hadoop
    • AWS
    • Kotlin
  2. Sep 2025 – Dec 2025

    CUBE Consulting · Business & Engineering Consultant

    AI tutoring tools for a real client, demoed end-to-end.

    • Built an AI tutoring assistant (Speech-to-Text + OpenAI) surfacing real-time prompts from live tutoring dialogue
    • Delivered an end-to-end demo to client Zentora on a Zoom-SDK video platform with scheduling and feedback
    • OpenAI
    • Zoom SDK
    • Speech-to-Text
  3. May 2025 – Aug 2025

    iQor · Software Engineering Intern

    Shipped mobile UI work and test automation for an app with 40,000+ users.

    • Rebuilt core UI flows for the iQorian app (40,000+ users), improving consistency and usability across the mobile experience
    • Built Appium test suites across mobile UI and backend APIs, adding automated regression coverage to CI/CD
    • React Native
    • Appium
    • CI/CD
  4. Jun 2024 – Aug 2024

    Cal AI · Software Engineering Intern

    LLM-powered features at a startup later acquired for $100M+ by MyFitnessPal.

    • Reworked the food-detection correction pipeline to parse natural-language edits with cloud LLMs, +20% accuracy in production
    • Migrated AWS Lambda from Python to TypeScript, cutting costs ~40%
    • TypeScript
    • AWS Lambda
    • LLMs
03

Projects

my favorite one ↓

01Cascade

2026

Graph RAG for sentiment cascades

A retrieval system that models how sentiment ripples through connected entities, built for the multi-hop questions flat vector search gets wrong. A Neo4j schema with 5 weighted relationship types and an N-hop Cypher retriever traces cascading impacts that embeddings alone miss.

100%entity recall vs 76% for flat vector search
  • LLM-as-judge eval harness where the graph won 75% of head-to-head multi-hop queries vs flat RAG
  • N-hop Cypher retriever over 5 weighted relationship types
  • Python
  • Neo4j
  • ChromaDB
  • FastAPI
  • Next.js
  • AWS S3
  • Claude

02drnk

2026 – Present

Screen time you have to earn

An iOS app that locks your distracting apps behind verified hydration. Apple DeviceActivity + FamilyControls gate screen time; a fail-closed computer-vision pipeline verifies the water is real; a deterministic, unit-tested economy engine handles caps, cooldowns, streaks, and multipliers.

fail-closedCV verification with no image storage and GDPR deletion
  • On-device frames verified via Gemini vision, engineered to fail closed on false positives
  • Privacy-first serverless backend with server-side keys
  • React Native
  • Expo
  • Supabase
  • Deno
  • Gemini
  • TypeScript

03Liftype

2026 – Present

Local-first lifting, parsed from plain English

A lifting app that understands "bench 3x8 at 185, felt easy". A regex fast-path handles the common cases and a Claude fallback catches the rest, so most logs never touch an LLM. Fully offline-capable with an outbox syncing to Supabase.

80%fewer LLM calls via the regex fast-path
  • Local-first architecture: offline by default, outbox sync to Supabase
  • Postgres + RLS + edge functions, LLM workout coaching, RevenueCat, OAuth
  • Expo
  • React Native
  • TypeScript
  • Supabase
  • Claude

more on GitHub ↗

04

Leadership

Mar 2026 – Present

Metanoia

Co-Founder & President

Co-founded a Greek Life outreach initiative at UIUC that drew 200+ attendees to its inaugural event, with grassroots marketing and recruiting pipelines across chapters.

Apr 2025 – Present

Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Illinois Beta

Vice President & Small Group Leader

Elected VP of a 100+ member chapter. Lead daily operations and facilitate a weekly small group with original personal-development curriculum.

Sep 2025 – Present

Phi Gamma Nu Business Fraternity

Philanthropy & Wellness Committee

Selected 1 of 30 from 900+ applicants. Raised $1,000 for Camp Kesem, supporting children of cancer patients.