# Debye (Pui San) Leong

> <p>UX Systems Architect & Front-end Engineer with 20+ years of experience across architecture, implementation, and UX.</p>

PDF resume: https://debye.io/docs/Resume_Leong_Debye(PuiSan).pdf

## Professional Experience

### UX Systems Architect / Front-end Engineer

[Peraton Inc.](https://peraton.com/)

Timeline: Nov 2012–Present

- Surfaced architectural, implementation, and UX risks early so teams could make informed decisions before issues hardened into delivery or compliance problems.
- Stabilized front-end patterns across projects by tightening inconsistent UI behavior, semantics, and accessibility before debt spread.
- Applied Section 508/WCAG standards as implementation discipline, catching issues that automated checks or visual review alone would miss.
- Used AI to pressure-test ideas, review edge cases, and accelerate delivery while retaining architectural ownership and judgment.
- Translated between design intent, engineering constraints, and real user behavior to keep solutions buildable, coherent, and usable beyond the demo.
- Identified fragile or over-engineered implementation paths, then simplified them into maintainable patterns teams could support.

### Sr. Java Developer

[Akimeka, LLC](http://www.akimeka.com/)

Timeline: May 2012–Oct 2012

- Designed and implemented Java/JEE-based web applications, integrating front-end and back-end components.
- Delivered system documentation and production support.

### Sr. Webmaster/Java Developer

[Pacific Disaster Center](https://www.pdc.org/)

Timeline: Apr 2006–Apr 2012

- Led development of responsive web apps and mobile-first sites using Responsive Web Design (RWD).
- Managed deployment, access controls, and analytics reporting.

### Software Engineer

[Pacific Disaster Center](https://www.pdc.org/)

Timeline: Jun 2004–Mar 2006

- Analyzed user requirements and designed, developed, and maintained desktop applications, GIS-related tools, and internal utilities.
- Designed and maintained JSP-based web applications, Oracle-backed systems, and internal desktop utilities. Handled implementation, documentation, and user support lifecycle.
- Handled implementation, documentation, and user support lifecycle.

### Computer Science Intern — GIS / Gazetteer

[Pacific Disaster Center](https://www.pdc.org/)

Timeline: Jan 2002–May 2004

- Built custom UI tools in Visual Basic 6.0 for metadata editing in Gazetteer database.
- Supported GIS/Gazetteer workflows with ESRI tools, ArcCatalog, VBA/Visual Basic, and ArcObjects.
- Conducted metadata research and taxonomy refinement for geographic place-names system.

## Impact Highlights

- Evaluated LLM-driven architectural approaches and surfaced implementation risks early.
- Refactored legacy components to improve ARIA compliance and reduce accessibility defects.
- Established a component audit process to reduce design-dev mismatch.
- Tightened front-end patterns to prevent subtle UI and accessibility regressions.
- Mentored developers on semantics, refactoring, and user-first implementation.

## Education & Certification

- AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner, [AWS CCP Exam](https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-cloud-practitioner/), Apr 2020
- M.S. Human-Computer Interaction, [DePaul University, Chicago](https://www.depaul.edu/Pages/default.aspx), 2012–2015
- Certificate in Database Management, [University of Hawaii at Hilo](https://hilo.hawaii.edu/), 2003–2004
- B.S. Computer Science, [University of Hawaii at Hilo](https://hilo.hawaii.edu/), 2000–2004
- Japanese Language Program - Certificate of Completion, [Nanzan University, Japan](http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/English/), 1994–1995
- B.A. Japanese Studies, [University of Hawaii at Manoa](https://manoa.hawaii.edu/), 1991–1995

## Skills & Tools

### Development & Accessibility

- Front-end: Vue, React, Svelte, Angular, RWD, PWA, SASS, USWDS
- Back-end: Java, Spring, C#, .NET, Oracle, SQL Server, MongoDB, Keycloak
- Accessibility: Section 508, WCAG, VoiceOver, NVDA, TalkBack, AMP, WAVE, ANDI

### UI/UX & Research

- Design: Adobe XD, Axure RP, Balsamiq, Photoshop, Illustrator, Tableau
- Research/Analysis: Interviews, surveys, usability evaluations, card sorts, Google Analytics, R, Morae

### Developer Tooling

- IDEs: VS Code, WebStorm, Eclipse, Visual Studio
- Version Control: GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, CodeCommit, SVN
- Build/Delivery: Docker, Jenkins, SonarQube, Nexus, Sentry, Apache HTTP Server, Apache Tomcat, AWS, WordPress

## Intercultural Experience

Lived in Macau and Japan; bring Cantonese and Japanese language experience to cross-cultural work.