Zhixun Tan
Software Engineer at Google
Sunnyvale, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolZhixun Tan is a staff software engineer at Google with 12 years of experience building security-sensitive and compiler-level tooling, and a MSCS from Carnegie Mellon. He leads an internal JavaScript analysis tool used across Ads, Android, and Chrome, and owns an in-house VBA compiler whose signals have measurably improved Gmail malware detection. A prolific systems engineer, his open-source contributions span MLIR/LLVM committer work and substantive projects like an OpenGL backend for TVM and core DB fixes in the CMU Peloton system. His background ranges from kernel tracing at NVIDIA to porting MicroPython on FPGA, reflecting deep expertise across compilers, databases, kernel internals, and ML compiler backends. Based in Sunnyvale, he combines production-scale impact with research-quality rigor and a track record of shipping cross-team, security-critical systems.
12 years of coding experience
Bachelor’s Degree, Electronic Engineering, Bachelor’s Degree, Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua UniversityShanghai High SchoolMaster of Science, Computer Science, 3.96, Master of Science, Computer Science, 3.96 at Carnegie Mellon UniversityVisiting International Student, Computer Science, Visiting International Student, Computer Science at Duke UniversitySummer Session, Computer Science, Summer Session, Computer Science at Stanford University
Chinese, English, Shanghainese
Github Skills (24)
webgl10
tvm10
c-language10
databases10
compiler-compiler10
gpu10
dbm10
compiler10
cprogramming-language10
opengl10
dbms10
database10
optimizers9
optimizer9
machine-learning9
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
cmu-db/peloton
Apr 2017 - Dec 2017
The Self-Driving Database Management System
Role in this project:
Database Engineer / Database Administrator
Database Engineer / Database AdministratorContributions:8 commits, 14 PRs, 64 comments in 8 months
Contributions summary:Zhixun's contributions focused on database-related tasks within the Peloton system. They addressed issues like bigint serialization, modified the Execute API, and cleaned up traffic cop code. The user also made changes to test files related to executor and optimizer functionality, including adjustments to plan execution and test setups. This work indicates a strong involvement in the core database management system implementation.
management-systemrdbmsdatabase-management-systemself-drivingdatabase
apache/tvm
Jan 2018 - Mar 2018
Open deep learning compiler stack for cpu, gpu and specialized accelerators
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & ML Engineer
Back-end Developer & ML EngineerContributions:16 commits, 13 PRs, 67 comments in 1 month
Contributions summary:Zhixun primarily contributed to the development of an OpenGL backend, specifically focusing on texture management and integration with the TVM stack. They added key features like texture creation, data upload/download, and program creation. Their work also involved adapting the code generation to handle OpenGL thread indices and incorporating the OpenGL module into the project's testing framework. The user's contributions are crucial for enabling the compilation and execution of deep learning models on OpenGL-compatible devices.
metalvulkancompilertensoropencl
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