# Samyok Nepal

![Samyok Nepal](/resources/cognition/portraits/samyok-nepal.webp)

working on poke.com  
Cognition  
Palo Alto, California, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Member of Technical Staff (Engineering)
- Joined: Dec 2024
- How they joined: With Poke (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/acquisitions/poke)
- Before Poke: Software Engineering, Jane Street
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Stanford University; Jane Street (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samyok
- X: @samyok
- GitHub: https://github.com/samyok
- Website: https://samyok.com
- Domain: cognition.com

## Notes
- Current role is Member of Technical Staff at The Interaction Company of California; the profile current-job fields identify both title and company. (linkedin.com/in/samyok)
- Public headline says "working on poke.com". (linkedin.com/in/samyok)
- 🍳 about me: https://yok.dev; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning. (linkedin.com/in/samyok, https://yok.dev)
- Previous roles include Member of Technical Staff at The Interaction Company of California; Software Engineering at Jane Street; Curriculum Developer at Art of Problem Solving; Software Engineering Intern at Robinhood; Teaching Assistant, Grader at Art of Problem Solving; Software Engineer I at Fiveable; Founder at Bobcat Notify; Freelance Web Developer at Self-employed; the experience history lists these employers and titles. (linkedin.com/in/samyok)
- Location is Palo Alto, California, United States; the profile location field provides this geography. (linkedin.com/in/samyok)

## Experience
- Member of Technical Staff at The Interaction Company of California (Dec 2024 - Present): first hire

poke.com
- Software Engineering at Jane Street (May 2024 - Aug 2024): Infrastructure
- Curriculum Developer at Art of Problem Solving (Apr 2023 - Nov 2023): Developing engaging and challenging problem sets, practice exams, and handouts for AoPS's premier online competitive coding training program, CodeWOOT.
- Software Engineering Intern at Robinhood (May 2023 - Aug 2023): Backend -- Options Platform Team
- Teaching Assistant, Grader at Art of Problem Solving (Aug 2021 - Apr 2023): Assist twice a week in teaching online classes of 20-50 students answering questions, guiding students, and helping debug.
Provide detailed logical and stylistic feedback to students' advanced math and Python solutions. Have graded introductory (Pre-Algebra, Geometry, Counting and Probability, etc.) to advanced (Calculus, WOOT, etc.) homework.

Architected and implemented low-level WebRTC voice and video calling functionality. Started as a proof-of-concept and then scaled to general availability on Google Kubernetes Engine.

Reduced application load times by 20x on high-traffic pages by optimizing database queries, network requests, and re-renders.

Refactored backend to a REST-ful API and automated tests with Jest and Puppeteer, improving performance and stability.

Deployed and managed servers on Google Compute Engine for internal tools used company-wide.

Designed and built user-facing features using Typescript, Next.js, React, Redux, Material UI, and MongoDB.

Gained 2000+ downloads, more than 2.5x the number of students. The school district offered to purchase the app for every school.

Collaborated with school administration and IT to deliver timely and relevant push notifications and in-app updates.

Maintained an average rating of 4.9 stars across both app stores with over 50 reviews.
- Freelance Web Developer at Self-employed (May 2018 - Nov 2019): Built and deployed a global network of servers to publish messages in under 200ms to over 7,500 concurrent users globally.
Developed complex web scraping bots and websites to successfully gather information requested by clients quickly and accurately.

## Education
- Stanford University - Visiting Student - (Jan 2023 - Dec 2023)
- University of Minnesota - Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science - (Jan 2022 - Dec 2024): Boba Club

## Sources
- https://x.com/samyok
- https://linkedin.com/in/samyok
- https://samyok.com/
- https://samyok.com/SamyokNepalResume.pdf
- linkedin.com/in/samyok
- https://yok.dev


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/samyok-nepal · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people