01 / WHO
I make AI feel like a real product.
Most AI demos crumble under a real conversation. I obsess over the seams: latency, interruption handling, tool-use, fallback. The work that survives contact with users is the work I want to do.
VOICE-DRIVEN PORTFOLIO · 2026
Ask me
anything.
I'm Bill Zhang, AI engineer at Pinterest, voice-first builder, serial hackathon winner. This site listens. Talk to it, scroll it, drag it around. It'll rearrange.
ABOUT
A builder who listens first.
02 / WHAT
Voice-first, agent-shaped systems.
Phones. Smart glasses. Browser sidebars. Pinned terminals. Wherever the interface is least visual, I'm trying to make it more useful: for banking, education, public safety, food rescue, sports tape.
03 / HOW
Ship a startup-grade product every weekend.
Thirty-six hackathon wins is a lot of weekends. The discipline of 36 hours sharpens the instinct: pick the smallest demo that proves the hypothesis, build the spine first, decorate last.
04 / WHY
The next billion users will talk to software.
Most people on Earth still type slower than they speak, and a lot of them never learned to type at all. Every product I touch tries to bend the floor of access a little closer to the ground.
PROJECTS · 6 STANDOUTS
Things I shipped.
Curated gallery
Ask by voice for any project, or filter the archive.
★ Grand Prize, UC Berkeley AI Hackathon 2024/dispatchai↗ deep diveEmpathetic 911 dispatcher co-pilot. Aggregates emergency calls, triages severity, extracts context, and keeps humans in control.
#ai#voice#safety#winner2024
★ Google Challenge, LA Hacks 2024/adapted↗ deep diveLectures that talk back. A voice tutor with Gemini-driven slides and emotion-aware pacing.
#ai#voice#education#winner2024
★ Grand + Goldman Sachs, HackUTD 2024/talktuahbank↗ deep diveVoice banking over a regular phone call. No internet, smartphone, or banking app required.
#voice#fintech#ai#winner2024
★ MLH GitHub, CruzHacks 2023/slugloop↗ deep diveReal-time UCSC loop bus tracker. Helped students see live campus bus locations and reduce pressure on metro routes.
#transit#social-good#winner2023
★ NLX Overall, AI ATL 2024/soundsearch↗ deep divePhone-call voice guidance for complex websites. A caller gets step-by-step spoken help while the page highlights what to do next.
#voice#ai#accessibility#winner2024
★ 2nd Place, Hack Dearborn 2024/swarmaid↗ deep diveDecentralized food rescue agents. Matches surplus suppliers to food banks and shelters with real-time logistics planning.
#ai#social-good#winner2024
SCROLL ↓ drives gallery →
6/15 standouts
HACKATHONS · 36 WINS
Thirty-six wins from shipping.
Hackathon culture is a forge. You start with nothing, you ship something, you defend it on a stage. These are selected public wins from a broader run with $150k+ in prizes.
Berkeley AI Hackathon2024★ Grand Prize · $50k✦HackUTD2024★ Grand Prize + Goldman Sachs✦HackDavis2025★ Best AI/ML Hack✦VTHacks2024★ Best Startup Hack✦YaleHacks2024★ 1st Place✦LAHacks2024★ Google Challenge✦AIATL2023★ Most Innovative Startup✦AIATL2024★ NLX Overall✦HackMerced2025★ Letta AI + Finance✦SpartaHacks2025★ Sustainability✦CruzHacks2025★ Niantic WebXR✦SoCalTechWeek2024★ Solana University✦HackMerced2024★ Letta + Finance✦DiamondHacks2024★ Captain's Classroom✦IrvineHacks2024★ Best Travel Hack✦HackDearborn2024★ 2nd Place✦Uncommon Hacks2024★ Programmatic Art✦HackDavis2024★ Best Intel Dev Cloud✦Berkeley AI Hackathon2024★ Grand Prize · $50k✦HackUTD2024★ Grand Prize + Goldman Sachs✦HackDavis2025★ Best AI/ML Hack✦VTHacks2024★ Best Startup Hack✦YaleHacks2024★ 1st Place✦LAHacks2024★ Google Challenge✦AIATL2023★ Most Innovative Startup✦AIATL2024★ NLX Overall✦HackMerced2025★ Letta AI + Finance✦SpartaHacks2025★ Sustainability✦CruzHacks2025★ Niantic WebXR✦SoCalTechWeek2024★ Solana University✦HackMerced2024★ Letta + Finance✦DiamondHacks2024★ Captain's Classroom✦IrvineHacks2024★ Best Travel Hack✦HackDearborn2024★ 2nd Place✦Uncommon Hacks2024★ Programmatic Art✦HackDavis2024★ Best Intel Dev Cloud✦
QWER Hacks2024★ Best Google Cloud✦CruzHacks2023★ MLH GitHub✦CruzHacks2022★ QB3 @ UCSC✦SBHacks2023★ Student Life Hack✦HackDavis2023★ Best MongoDB Atlas✦CitrusHacks2023★ New Frontiers✦ACMHacks2023★ Best Global Solution✦Hackrithmitic2023★ Best Data Science✦AI Hacks2022★ 1st Overall✦WildHacks2022★ 2nd Overall✦Hacks for Hackers2023★ 3rd Overall✦Opportunity Hacks2022★ 3rd Place✦Web3Apps2023★ Microsoft Cloud + Circle✦Planet Unity2023★ Top 10✦GraceHacks2022★ Best Mobile✦PeddieHacks2022★ Innovation Prize (HS)✦Funathon2022★ Participation Prize✦FullyHacks2024★ 1st Place✦QWER Hacks2024★ Best Google Cloud✦CruzHacks2023★ MLH GitHub✦CruzHacks2022★ QB3 @ UCSC✦SBHacks2023★ Student Life Hack✦HackDavis2023★ Best MongoDB Atlas✦CitrusHacks2023★ New Frontiers✦ACMHacks2023★ Best Global Solution✦Hackrithmitic2023★ Best Data Science✦AI Hacks2022★ 1st Overall✦WildHacks2022★ 2nd Overall✦Hacks for Hackers2023★ 3rd Overall✦Opportunity Hacks2022★ 3rd Place✦Web3Apps2023★ Microsoft Cloud + Circle✦Planet Unity2023★ Top 10✦GraceHacks2022★ Best Mobile✦PeddieHacks2022★ Innovation Prize (HS)✦Funathon2022★ Participation Prize✦FullyHacks2024★ 1st Place✦
36
Hackathons won
$74k
Largest prize
$150k+
Prizes won
17
Colleges visited
EXPERIENCE
A short, productive career.
Jul 2026 — Now
Software Engineer II, AI Solutions
Building and deploying LLM agent systems for internal and partner-facing workflows — agent design, tool use, RAG integration, and production guardrails — and partnering with product and engineering teams to set the evaluation, quality, and cost bar each solution must clear before launch.
NowJun 2025 — Jul 2026
Applied AI Engineer (Forward-Deployed)
Shipped a production multi-agent system automating denied-claim investigations — 3 sub-agents across 20 policy workflows, 300–500 weekly users, up to 20K claims/week — and led agent design for the TIME AI Agent, launched publicly in Nov 2025 over a 102-year archive in 13 languages. Owned the LLM-as-judge eval framework that took QA-audit accuracy 64% → 88% and helped close a seven-figure expansion, and cut the cost of a full Mayo Clinic validation run ~4× ($4.6K → ~$1.2K).
Jun 2023 — Jun 2025
AI Engineer
Joined as a senior AI intern in June 2023 and converted to full-time that August. Built an LLM analytics and evaluation pipeline that grew coverage of 10,000+ weekly support chats from 1–2% to 100% while cutting processing from 8 hours to 1. Rubric-based retrieval scoring and 20 monitoring dashboards lifted accuracy 90% → 95% and dropped human hand-offs 40% → 13%.
Jun 2024 — Dec 2024
Co-founder + CFO
Built an emergency-response AI platform with Berkeley SkyDeck funding, solo-engineering the low-latency voice agent and telephony behind the dispatcher demo — intent routing, emotion signals, structured handoff to responders. Dispatch AI won the $50K Grand Prize at the UC Berkeley AI Hackathon against 900+ participants.
Feb 2023 — Jun 2024
Founder
Founded and shipped UCSC's real-time bus tracker, which served 20,000+ users. Placed Global Top 10 out of 2,000+ projects in the Google Solution Challenge.
Jun 2022 — Dec 2023
CS Instructor + Teaching Assistant
Taught Python through a challenge-based curriculum and coached USACO students from Bronze toward Silver through algorithm practice, debugging, and contest prep.
2023 — 2025+
Hackathon Mainstay
Mainly competed during college and still jumps into select events. Most of the projects on this page started as weekend builds.
EDUCATION
Three schools, one path.
Click a card to flip it.
01 / 03
University of Southern California
M.S. Computer Science, AI Specialization
Aug 2023 — May 2025
USC · NOTES
M.S. Computer Science, AI Specialization
Graduate-level ML, applied AI, agentic systems. Built voice-first products throughout.
02 / 03
UC Santa Cruz
B.S. Computer Science
Sep 2020 — Mar 2023
UCSC · NOTES
B.S. Computer Science
Finished a 4-year program in 2.5 years. Caught the hackathon bug.
03 / 03
Lynbrook High School
College Prep
2016 — 2020
Lynbrook · NOTES
College Prep
South Bay. First wrote code here.
I buildvoice-firstagentsthat ship inweekends,wingrand prizes,and run inproduction.I care aboutlatency,human-in-the-loopcontrol, and thequiet craftof making AI feel like arealproduct.
RESUME · ONE-PAGER
The printable version.
Same story, traditional format. Click through below or grab the PDF; both stay in lock-step with everything else on this page.
resume.pdf · last updated July 26, 2026
5+
Years building
36
Hackathon wins
9
Voice apps shipped
$150k+
Prizes won
At a glance
- AI engineer: voice-first agents, multimodal pipelines, real-time inference.
- Pinterest, AI Solutions: LLM agent systems, RAG, production guardrails. Previously Scale AI.
- USC: M.S. Computer Science, AI specialization.
- Stack: TypeScript / Python / Rust, Next.js, Retell, Twilio, Mistral, Llama.
Voice tip
“Send me your resume.” → opens the download.
HOW THIS SITE WORKS
A portfolio that talks back.
Most portfolios are read-only documents. This one is an agent. You speak, and the structured tool calls coming back from the LLM rearrange the page in real time: filter projects, scroll, expand a deep-dive, jump to a specific section. The voice agent is the navigation.
01
Mic input
Browser mic stream → Retell client SDK. Low-latency WebRTC pipe to a hosted agent.
02
LLM agent
Retell agent runs an instruction-tuned model with this site's content + a small tool registry as its world.
03
Tool calls
Agent emits structured tool calls: filter_projects(tag), focus_project(id), open_project(id), scroll_to(section).
04
VoiceBus
A pub-sub on window broadcasts each tool call. No prop drilling, no router. Sections opt in.
05
Sections react
Each section subscribes to the events it cares about and animates its own state. The site rearranges itself.
06
Voice reply
The agent confirms in spoken English while the page settles. The user keeps both hands free.
Voice
- Retell AI (agent runtime)
- WebRTC (stream)
- Custom tool registry
Brain
- GPT-4 / Claude (selectable)
- Site-grounded system prompt
- Function-calling JSON schema
Frame
- Next.js + React 19
- Three.js + GLSL bg
- Framer Motion + GSAP
State
- VoiceBus pub-sub
- URL-driven section anchors
- Per-section local React state
// every section subscribes to the same bus
VoiceBus.on((cmd) => {
if (cmd.type === "filter") setFilter(cmd.tag);
if (cmd.type === "focus") setFocusId(cmd.id);
if (cmd.type === "open") setOpenId(cmd.id);
if (cmd.type === "scroll") scrollToSection(cmd.id);
});
// the agent's tool calls become events
agent.onToolCall("filter_projects", ({ tag }) =>
VoiceBus.emit({ type: "filter", tag })
);off the clock · off the clock · off the clock
music · climbing · coffee
made in san francisco
OFF THE CLOCK
A few true things.
SHOT · 2025 · LA
✦Finished a 4-year CS degree in 2.5 years.
✦Won my first hackathon at 17. Haven't slowed down.
✦Speaks Mandarin and English; building agents in both.
✦If I'm not coding, I'm probably making music or chasing good noodles.
✦Plays drums and piano on the side.
✦Believe the next billion users will talk to software, not click it.
› Try asking the orb: “What does Bill do for fun?”