Daniel Zhou
Senior Applied Scientist, Software Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolDaniel Zhou is a senior applied scientist and software engineer with 11+ years building NLP, IR, and LLM systems at AWS AI, where he helped launch five AI services and now focuses on LLM evaluation and mining live conversations to surface real user needs. He blends applied research and product engineering—taking models from evaluation into production at scale—and emphasizes human-centered AI as the key differentiator as foundation models commoditize. A PhD in Information from the University of Michigan with dissertation work on political classification and recommender systems, he has commercialized research through startups like BalaLab and a consulting practice, KnowSun. Daniel’s experience spans enterprise engineering (IBM China) to entrepreneurial product work, giving him a rare combination of academic rigor and hands-on delivery. He’s particularly skilled at translating nuanced user behavior into measurement systems that drive product decisions, not just model metrics. Based in Ann Arbor, he pairs deep technical expertise with a persistent focus on understanding people, not just performance numbers.
12 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
University of MichiganPhD, Information, PhD, Information at University of Michigan - School of InformationB.E., Computer Science, B.E., Computer Science at Shandong University
Chinese
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (35)
mxnet9
julia9
python8
go8
scala8
javascript8
mobile8
dataflow8
java7
menu7
deep-learning7
python-client6
client-library6
menu-navigation5
rest5
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
danithaca/knowsun
Mar 2017 - Mar 2026
Contributions:8 pushes, 1 branch in 9 years 1 month
danithaca/drupal-computing
Sep 2014 - Dec 2014
Contributions:72 commits in 3 months
pythonclient-libraryphppython-clientdistributed-computing
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