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Xu Ning
Xu Ning Director of Engineering, AI Platform at Snap Inc.

Xu Ning is a seasoned Director of Engineering at Snap Inc., at the helm of AI Platform teams that architect solutions to stimulate advancements in ads, discover, spotlight, growth, maps, generative AI, among other areas. With a robust LinkedIn network of 2866 connections, Xu's leadership extends back to Uber, where they stood as a group manager for Uber AI Platform (Michelangelo), delivering pioneer machine learning platforms that transformed Uber's ML-driven businesses and products. Xu has also contributed significantly to open-source software through the development of renowned frameworks and libraries like Horovod, Petastorm, and Neuropod.

Before spearheading Snap's ambitious AI initiatives, Xu accumulated diverse and deep-rooted experience in software development and machine learning at companies like Uber, Facebook, Akamai, and Microsoft. During their tenure at Uber, Xu founded and managed teams within Uber Data Infrastructure, enhancing Hadoop/Spark performance and ensuring GDPR compliance. The foundation of Cherami, Uber's distributed message queue, and its ascension to production in less than a year, underscore Xu's adeptness in team leadership and project execution.

Xu Ning's impressive career is underpinned by a solid academic background, holding a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Boston University and a Bachelor's degree in Automation from Tsinghua University. Equipped with advanced skills in algorithms and C++, Xu has made recognized appearances at technological conferences such as AICC and NVIDIA GTC, and has shaped industry discourse through blogs and technical steering committees. Their work is a testament to their expertise in machine learning, deep learning, MLOps, big data, and infrastructure engineering.

More about this expert

Full name
Xu Ning
Location
Seattle, Washington, United States
Title
Director of Engineering, AI Platform
Company
Snap Inc.
Industry
Software Development
LinkedIn Connections
2866
Summary
I am an Engineering Director at Snap leading AI Platform teams. Prior to Snap, I led multiple software development teams in Ubers Michelangelo Machine Learning Platform. My teams are major contributors to Ubers open-source Deep Learning software: Horovod distributed training framework (horovod.ai), Petastorm data access library (github.com/uber/petastorm) and Neuropod unified inference library (neuropod.ai). Before Michelangelo, I led Uber's Cherami distributed task queue, Hadoop observability and Data security teams. Prior to Uber, I held engineering positions at Facebook, Akamai and Microsoft. My interests are machine learning, deep learning, MLOps, big data and infrastructure engineering. My work at Uber is published at https://eng.uber.com/author/xu-ning/.
Skills
Algorithms C++

Education

Boston University
PhD
Field of study: Systems Engineering
Tsinghua University
Bachelor
Field of study: Automation

Positions

Snap Inc.
Director of Engineering, AI Platform
Sep 2022 - Present

I lead Snap's AI Platform that powers ads, discover, spotlight, growth, maps, generative AI and many other use cases. Please check out some blog posts from my team.
Uber
Greater Seattle Area
Senior Manager, Uber AI Platform (Michelangelo)
Apr 2018 - Sep 2022

Group manager of Uber AI Platform (Michelangelo), leading teams across Seattle, San Francisco, and Sunnyvale. Michelangelo is an industry pioneering, large-scale end-to-end Machine Learning platform powering all of Uber's ML-enabled businesses and products. I develop ML Platform strategy and technology vision, oversee open-source development and 3rd party vendor integration, and drive multi-year programs to uplevel ML at Uber.

Member of Horovod Technical Steering Committee

Conference appearances: AICC 2019, NVIDIA GTC 2021, Ray Summit 2021 and 2022
Uber
Apr 2018 - Sep 2022 · 4 yrs 6 mos
Engineering Manager II, Data Infrastructure
Mar 2017 - Mar 2018

Founded and managed teams in Uber Data Infrastructure:
* Hadoop Observability: team founder, key designer of Uber Hadoop Profiler. Built large-scale analytics to improve Hadoop/Spark perf and efficiency (https://eng.uber.com/jvm-profiler).
* Hadoop Security: GDPR compliance. Active contributor in Hadoop Security architecture design that includes Kerberos, Apache Sentry, Knox and in-house software.
Uber
Apr 2018 - Sep 2022 · 4 yrs 6 mos
Engineering Manager, Core Infrastructure and Developer Experience
Jun 2015 - Feb 2017

Founded and managed Cherami team. Cherami is Uber’s open-source distributed message queue:
* Founder, key designer and major code contributor. Wrote the original design document and a technical blog post (https://eng.uber.com/cherami).
* Hired/staffed team, launched to production in 9 months, and continued operating it for 18 months. Adopted by more than 100 projects within Uber.
* Founded Cadence team (https://github.com/uber/cadence), Uber’s asynchronous workflow engine which became Temporal (temporal.io).
Facebook
Greater Seattle Area
Research Scientist, Traffic Infrastructure
Nov 2012 - Jun 2015

Datacenter web traffic optimization, Internet performance measurement, load balancing and CDN. Worked on high performance web server (proxygen).
Etiometry Inc.
Boston, MA
Co-founder
2010 - 2013

Medical risk analytics for neonatal cardiac physiology and government SBIR contracting.
Akamai Technologies
Greater Boston Area
Senior Software Engineer, Mapping
2010 - 2012

Global load balancing