// ACHIEVEMENT_LOG :: ALL_ENTRIES

Root Access
Earned

A record that starts with a typing contest on dying Dell keyboards and runs through hackathon podiums, esports production booths, and the volunteer bench at Google Developer Groups Cebu — up to two years of QA on a regulated tokenisation platform in Malaysia, the AI Engineer post at Cubeworks Technology, and coaching the next cohort through their own hackathon. Every entry below actually happened — no aspirational metrics.

Graduation portrait of Roel Abarca in academic regalia
OPERATOR_ID :: ROEL FRANCIS ABARCA
0RD PLACE — HACKATHON
0ND PLACE — 56 DISTRICTS
0ST CAMPUS MINECRAFT SMP
0+ WPM ON DEAD KEYBOARDS
0+ PROJECTS SHIPPED
0+ YRS VIRTUALIZATION
0ST SC-REGISTERED IEO — QA
Development workstation at night with code on the main display
CURRENT POST :: AI SYSTEMS IN PRODUCTION

2024 — PRESENT

AI Engineer,
Cubeworks Technology Inc.

Started in 2024 as a software engineering intern — converted to full-time AI Engineer in 2025. The internship turned into the job, which is the part of a CV that can't be padded. The work spans language models and computer vision — CUDA-accelerated pipelines in Python where classical OpenCV preprocessing feeds the neural stage, and Core ML for inference that runs on-device in Swift instead of round-tripping to a server. The operator mindset carries over intact: a model is still infrastructure. It needs observability, cost and latency budgets, and a defined answer for what happens when it's slow, wrong, or simply unavailable. Treating inference as a dependency that can fail — rather than as magic — is the whole job.

2024—2025 · SW ENG INTERN→ CONVERTED FULL-TIME2025—PRESENT · AI ENGINEERLLM SYSTEMSCOMPUTER VISIONCUDAOPENCVCORE MLPYTHONSWIFTPRODUCTION ML
Cohort and facilitators of the Cubeworks IIoT Engineering Practical Training Program, gathered in the training room on day one
CUBEWORKS :: IIoT ENGINEERING PRACTICAL TRAINING PROGRAM

BREAKTHROUGH · CUBEWORKS

IIoT Engineering
Training Program

The breakthrough at Cubeworks: an Industrial IoT engineering practical training program built to close the gap between academic theory and the plant floor — hands-on upskilling on real industrial hardware rather than slideware. Getting a cohort this size productive on IIoT means the curriculum, the lab environment and the devices all have to work on day one, for everyone, at once. Same operator discipline as everything else here, just pointed at people instead of servers.

INDUSTRIAL IoTPRACTICAL TRAININGEDGE DEVICESUPSKILLING
Team UC-B holding their University of Cebu certificates after the 2026 hackathon, with a whiteboard reading TEAM UC-B HACKATHON 2026
TEAM UC-B :: HACKATHON 2026, CERTIFICATES IN HAND

2026

Hackathon Coach,
UC Banilad × JobTarget

Coached Team UC-B through the University of Cebu – Banilad × JobTarget hackathon — and coached them to a finish. Two years after taking a podium myself, the more useful skill turned out to be transferring it: scoping an idea down to something shippable inside the clock, unblocking people at 2 AM, and making sure a team of that size ships one coherent thing instead of several half-built ones. Everyone in this photo walked out with a certificate.

COACHING / MENTORSHIPHACKATHONTEAM LEADERSHIPUC BANILAD × JOBTARGET
Roel working at a curved monitor at his desk during the remote QA internship
REMOTE QA :: KLDX, MALAYSIA — TWO YEARS ON THE CLOCK

2024 — 2026 · MALAYSIA

QA Intern,
KLDX — Kapital DX

Two years of quality assurance on regulated FinTech infrastructure. KLDX (Kapital DX Sdn Bhd) is Malaysia's first Initial Exchange Offering operator registered with the Securities Commission Malaysia — a blockchain-based tokenisation platform issuing digital securities against private-market assets, from company equity to fixed income and fund interests. Testing in that environment raises the bar from "it works" to "it's auditable": on-chain settlement, Shariah-compliant product flows, and defects that carry regulatory weight rather than just a bug ticket. Run concurrently with the Cubeworks internship.

QA / TESTINGFINTECHWEB3 / BLOCKCHAINTOKENISATIONREGULATED SYSTEMS
DevFest Cebu crowd — hundreds of developers in an auditorium with GDG Cebu letters on stage
DEVFEST CEBU :: FULL HOUSE

2025 — PRESENT

Technical Volunteer,
GDG Cebu

Behind every smooth talk at DevFest and Google I/O Extended Cebu, there's a production booth. That's my post — macOS, OBS Studio, and Google Cloud Platform wired into presentation workflows that cut technical friction for speakers to near zero. When hundreds of developers show up, the demos just work.

OBS STUDIOGCPPHOTOGRAPHYLIVE PRODUCTION
Roel receiving a token on stage at Google I/O Extended Cebu
GOOGLE I/O EXTENDED :: ON STAGE

2024

3rd Place,
Hackathon Podium

Architected the structured backend that carried the team to a podium finish — NestJS services over MongoDB with Gemini AI doing the heavy inference. Built under deadline pressure, judged against the field, and it held. The operator mindset works in sprint conditions too.

NESTJSMONGODBGEMINI AI
The first eduCLaaS batch group photo in a classroom
EDUCLAAS :: FIRST BATCH, BDSE07

2022 — PRESENT

First Batch,
Dual Degree Track

Part of the pioneering cohort running two software engineering programs in parallel — BSIT-SE at the University of Cebu – Banilad and a Bachelor's in Software Engineering with Lithan eduCLaaS, Singapore. Spring Boot MVC, Docker containerization, and Power BI data modeling, mastered on two syllabi at once.

SPRING BOOTDOCKERPOWER BI
UC eduCLaaS learners visiting the University of Cebu chairman
UC :: COURTESY VISIT TO CHAIRMAN AWG

2022 — PRESENT

Field Ops,
University of Cebu

Production lead for Valkyrie Esports — running broadcast for campus tournaments and deploying the university's first-ever Minecraft SMP server. On the side: applying sysadmin and networking skills to streamline PSITS-B org workflows. Recognized among the incoming cohort in a courtesy visit to the UC chairman.

ESPORTS PRODUCTIONGAME SERVERSNETWORKING

// FULL_LOG :: CHRONOLOGICAL

The Receipts

[3RD]

Hackathon Podium Finish

UNIVERSITY OF CEBU — BANILAD · 2024

Architected a structured NestJS + MongoDB backend with Gemini AI integration under competition deadline. 3rd place against the full field.

[1ST]

PC Assembly Champion

COMPOSTELA SCIENCE & TECH HS · GRADE 7

Won the school PC Assembly contest as a Grade 7 student — against Grade 11 competitors — by a significant margin. Hardware domination, on record.

[2ND]

Division-Level Basic Encoding

ARANETA LEARNING CENTER · ELEMENTARY

2nd place at Division Level against 56 districts — typing 40+ WPM on unmaintained Dell keyboards, roughly twice as fast as peers.

[SMP]

First Campus Minecraft SMP

VALKYRIE ESPORTS, UC BANILAD

Deployed the university's first-ever Minecraft SMP server and headed the production team for campus esports events.

[OPS]

Org Workflow Optimization

PSITS-B · UC BANILAD

Applied sysadmin and networking skills to streamline student-org workflows — the same playbook later used for GDG Cebu speaker pipelines.

[NET]

Collaborative Velocity

COMPOSTELA SCIENCE & TECH HS

Built local networks to share Premiere and After Effects assets across teams, cutting group production time by two full weeks.

[HON]

Consistent First Honor

ARANETA LEARNING CENTER

First Honor student, consistently, through elementary — the earliest entry in the log.

[GDG]

Technical Volunteer

GOOGLE DEVELOPER GROUPS CEBU · 2025—

Running presentation and production workflows for DevFest and I/O Extended — near-zero technical friction for speakers, event after event.

[LAB]

A Decade of Virtualization

THE HOMELAB · 2016—

10+ years of virtualization and 7+ of system administration, culminating in a self-hosted production fleet at yeems214.xyz — including a Windows 2000 / IIS 5.0 museum exhibit that still serves traffic.

// LOG_END :: ROOT_ACCESS_GRANTED

The Next Entry
Could Be Yours

ESTABLISH COMMS
BACK TO THE PROJECT INDEX ▸