Summary
Yang Gao is a staff developer with 12 years of experience building end-to-end data lifecycle systems that power analytics, experimentation and ML, currently driving data platform work at Shopify after leading Bitmoji’s migration to streaming and Snap’s consolidation into a shared data ecosystem. He blends hands-on engineering across frontend, backend, ETL and cloud (AWS/GCP) with cross-functional program leadership—managing privacy, legal, product and infra stakeholders to deliver scalable, cost-saving pipelines. Yang has a research background in NLP and machine learning, co-founded a music-recommendation startup, and is comfortable mentoring engineers and data scientists on Airflow, SQL and GDPR-compliant data practices. Notably, his projects have materially reduced operational costs and improved developer efficiency while navigating complex compliance and multi-team integrations.
12 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
PhD student, Computer Science, PhD student, Computer Science at University of Southern California
Master’s Degree, Informatics, Distinction, Master’s Degree, Informatics, Distinction at The University of Edinburgh
The University of Hong Kong (HKU)
Bachelor’s Degree, Civil Engineering, Hons, Bachelor’s Degree, Civil Engineering, Hons at Zhejiang University
English, Chinese, Hakka, German