Hi! I’m Riley McNair, a recent Computer Science graduate from the University of British Columbia (BCS second-degree program). I completed my coursework in December 2025 and will officially graduate in May 2026.
I started out studying Political Science and Economics at UBC, and while I loved the subject matter, I found myself most drawn to the analytical side of things, especially data analysis and statistics. After graduating that interest eventually led me into the computer science second degree program.
Switching into CS was definitely a big shift, but it’s been incredibly rewarding. I’ve developed a strong foundation in programming, data systems, and software development, and I’m especially interested in roles that sit at the intersection of data, politics, and engineering.
During my 8-month co-op, I worked as a data analyst on large-scale datasets, using SQL and Python to support research and decision-making. I built reusable data workflows, wrote complex queries, and worked on projects involving hypothesis testing and longitudinal analysis.
I also collaborated with different teams to translate data into useful insights, whether that was through structured analysis, reporting, or building tools that made data easier to work with. That experience really helped me understand how data is used in real-world systems and how important clean, reliable pipelines are.
Texas Procurement Watch: A personal data engineering project where I built an end-to-end AWS pipeline to ingest and monitor public procurement data. The pipeline stores versioned raw data in S3 and transforms it into a curated dataset for analysis. I used tools like Lambda, Athena, EventBridge, SNS, and Terraform to automate the workflow.
Prediction Modeling – Voter Turnout: A project focused on building predictive models using R. I explored techniques like ridge regression and feature selection, and worked through the full process of data cleaning, modeling, and evaluation.
Ski Resort Database: A full-stack database application where I designed a relational schema and built a Node.js interface to support queries and operations. This project helped me better understand how backend systems interact with structured data.
Political Candidate Information Kiosk: A GUI-based project that simulates a voting system, using JSON for data storage. This was an early project that got me interested in building user-facing applications.
Outside of tech, I spend a lot of time outdoors skiing, touring, hiking, and backpacking around BC. I also enjoy baking, reading, and crocheting when I want something a bit more low-key.
Thanks for checking out my site!