Martin Lau
Software Engineer at Facebook
Fremont, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolMartin Lau is a seasoned software engineer with 12+ years building high-performance networking and systems software, currently at Facebook in Fremont. He specializes in Linux, C/C++, Nginx, TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, and SSL, and has a strong track record designing and hardening low-level network stacks at companies like Akamai and CDNetworks. An active open-source contributor to prominent BPF projects (libbpf and iovisor/bcc), he has fixed leaks, improved tracing, and extended BPF TCP capabilities—work that directly impacts kernel-level networking and observability tooling. Martin combines academic rigor from Cornell and HKU with hands-on product and startup experience as a co-founder, enabling him to move between deep systems engineering and practical product-driven decisions. Notably, his contributions reveal an aptitude for subtle, performance-sensitive fixes that improve reliability in large-scale networked systems.
11 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
The University of Hong Kong (HKU)MEng, Computer Science, MEng, Computer Science at Cornell University
Github Skills (22)
url-routing10
ebpf10
libbpf10
packet10
c1110
linux-kernel10
networking10
bpf10
c1710
kernel10
filter10
ipv610
bcc10
network-protocol10
protocols10
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
libbpf/libbpf
Mar 2019 - Mar 2022
Automated upstream mirror for libbpf stand-alone build.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:28 commits, 2 PRs, 1 comment in 3 years
Contributions summary:Martin primarily contributed to the `libbpf/libbpf` repository by implementing and enhancing the BPF (Berkeley Packet Filter) functionality. They added support for new BPF map types, such as `BPF_MAP_TYPE_SK_STORAGE`, and introduced new helper functions to interact with BPF programs and the kernel. The user also made changes to the TCP stack to allow BPF programs to read and write TCP header options, providing flexibility in network packet processing and traffic management.
bpfstand-alonestandtracingebpf
iovisor/bcc
May 2016 - Nov 2017
BCC - Tools for BPF-based Linux IO analysis, networking, monitoring, and more
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:4 reviews, 7 commits, 3 PRs in 1 year 6 months
Contributions summary:Martin contributed to the core functionality of the BCC (BPF Compiler Collection) project, primarily focusing on enhancements and bug fixes within the C codebase. Their work involved addressing file descriptor leaks in the `libbpf.c` file, improving tracing functionality and networking performance, and also adding support for the perf_submit_skb function. These changes indicate an understanding of low-level system interactions and efficient data processing, impacting IO analysis, networking, and monitoring capabilities of the BCC tools.
bpfbcclinuxnetworkingebpf
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