Intro
My name is 李 奕廷 (リ エキテイ Li Yiting), but most people refer to me as Ethan in an English environment. I'm happy to join XAION DATA as a Software Engineer starting October 20, 2025.
My Background
Born in Shanghai, China, I spent 12 years of my life in the United States and Canada combined, before coming to Japan.
Education
Graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering and a Master's Degree in Computer Science from UC San Diego, I've always held a great interest in Machine Learning and Data Science. During my Master's study, my research focused on music generation using Transformers, on which LLMs nowadays are built.
Experiences
After graduation, I joined a local startup in San Diego, Housecall Pro, where I gained hands-on experience with industry-level software engineering practices, team collaboration, and managing the feedback loop between developers and stakeholders.
Soon after, I got the oppertunity to join Google in Mountain View, where I worked on Cloud AI Infrastructure and helped building Google's largest internal Gemini finetuning platform. We worked very closely with the Gemini team, optimizing the machine learning training experience for Google's product teams.
Why XAION DATA
The mission of XAION DATA is to "Maximize the Value of the World", by uncovering the value of countless data buried in this information age, which aligns perfectly with my interest in data and machine learning.
Why a startup, after Google?
Since I started my career at a startup, I understand the challenges startups pose, as well as the growth opportunities they offer. After three years at Google, I realized that at the current stage of my career I would be better suited for a startup envinronment, where I can challenge myself to take on more leadership opportunities and manifest more direct impact of my work.
Why Japan?
Long story short, I like Japanese cities. Growing up heavily influced by Japanese anime culture, and having a strong interest in urban planning, I have been studying Japanese cities and urban lifestyle since college. This lead to me picking up the Japanese language around five years ago, when I decided that I would like to move there one day.
The Team
The development team at XAION DATA is filled with talented engineers. I'm surprised by how much the team has achieved with how few engineers there have been. Everyone is proud of being the proudct owner, and are all actively working towards a common goal.
Onboarding
There are very detailed step-by-step onboarding documents for newcomers to help them get familiarized with the development environment, as well as hands-on experience with the products themselves.
Atmosphere
Everyone here is super nice and friendly. It has been great learning from everyone around me, and exchange our interests and thoughts during free times. Most engineers work on a hybrid work scheudle, where we go to the office every two weeks. Some of us, however, do show up more often.
My Vision
Whilst I hope to fully leverage my experice with large scale projects and my robust machine learning expertise, I'm also keen to accelerate my career growth, especially in terms of project management. Looking forward to take on future challenge at XAION DATA.
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