Yanfei Zhang
Founder & CEO at Databend
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolYanfei Zhang is a founder and CEO with 14 years of deep expertise in cloud databases and distributed systems, currently building Databend—an open-source, Rust-engineered alternative to Snowflake from San Francisco. He has a strong operational background as QingCloud's Cloud Database Technical Director and as an Alibaba Cloud TokuDB maintainer, bringing production RDS and backup experience to large-scale data platforms. A hands-on engineer, he contributed significant backend and consensus logic to RadonDB and Xenon—work that spans 2PC transaction frameworks, Raft leader-stability improvements, and backup/restore tooling. Yanfei blends product leadership with kernel-level contributions to ClickHouse and MySQL variants, demonstrating rare fluency from storage engines to cloud services. His practical focus on reliability and scalability, plus the choice of Rust for Databend, signals a long-term bet on performance-safe, modern infrastructure.
14 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
BS, BS at Shandong University of Technology
Chinese, English
Stackoverflow
11reputation
0reached
2answers
0questions
Github Skills (29)
transaction10
mysql10
databases10
cluster-computing10
transactionscope10
rpc10
go10
raft10
transaction-manager10
relational-databases10
clustering10
sql-database10
database10
high-availability9
system-management9
Programming languages (14)
Github contributions (5)
radondb/radon
Feb 2018 - Feb 2021
RadonDB is an open source, cloud-native MySQL database for building global, scalable cloud services
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & Database Engineer
Back-end Developer & Database EngineerContributions:10 releases, 2 reviews, 149 commits in 3 years
Contributions summary:Yanfei primarily focused on the back-end development aspects of the RadonDB project. Their contributions involved implementing and modifying core transaction management logic, specifically related to two-phase commit (2PC) protocols, including the introduction of interfaces and refactoring of existing code to align with the new transaction framework. The user also addressed issues with the database's behavior, such as the handling of database schema, the support for "show table status", and the correction of checksums. Additionally, the user contributed by adding set auto commit to start transaction functionality and improving python mysql connector.
cloudnativecloud-servicesdatabasemysql-databasecloud-native
radondb/xenon
Feb 2018 - Dec 2020
The MySQL Cluster Autopilot Management with GTID and Raft
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:6 releases, 1 review, 28 commits in 2 years 10 months
Contributions summary:Yanfei primarily focused on developing and maintaining back-end functionality related to the MySQL cluster management system. Contributions include the implementation of RPC methods for interacting with MySQL instances, along with the introduction of features for backup, restore, and Raft consensus operations within the cluster. The user also addressed bugs, refined test cases, and updated project dependencies, enhancing the system's reliability and performance. They modified core logic related to Raft leader election and state transitions to improve the stability of the distributed system.
management-systemmysqlconsensusgtidmysql-cluster
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