Zixuan Li
Software Engineer at Instagram
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolZixuan Li is a software engineer based in New York with seven years of hands-on experience building full-stack systems and shipping open-source software. He has contributed extensively to high-profile projects like Python's PEPs and Zulip—authoring typing improvements, backend migrations, and UI fixes—and helped harden libraries such as python-wechaty with tests and mypy enforcement. A repeat Google Summer of Code contributor and mentor, Zixuan combines deep static-typing and tooling expertise with practical engineering work on REST APIs, E2E encryption, and Flutter app development. At NYU he led TA teams and modernized course infrastructure, bringing a methodical approach to grading, CI, and language tooling. He’s comfortable moving between low-level language design (TypedDict/Python typing) and product-facing features, and often surfaces hard-to-find bugs through large-scale static analysis and migrations.
7 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science Computer Science, Bachelor of Science Computer Science at New York UniversityHigh School AP, High School AP at Shenzhen Middle School
Stackoverflow
2,230reputation
102kreached
82answers
10questions
Github Skills (35)
wechaty10
static-typing10
javascript10
pytest10
python10
back-end-development10
django10
testing10
mypy10
dynamic-typing10
bots10
implicit-typing10
pep10
typehinting10
type-annotations10
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
zulip/python-zulip-api
Apr 2021 - Oct 2021
Python library for the Zulip API.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:26 reviews, 33 commits, 14 PRs in 6 months
Contributions summary:Zixuan contributed to the Zulip API library by fixing bugs and implementing features for Zulip bots. They addressed an edit time limit error in the incrementor bot, ensuring messages were resent when updates failed. They also fixed the botserver return value to align with changes on the server side, ensuring compatibility with outgoing webhooks. Furthermore, they refactored the terminal-based bot handler by extracting the message server and adding support for reactions.
python-libraryapipythonpypizulip
zulip/zulip
Mar 2021 - Jan 2023
Zulip server and web application. Open-source team chat that helps teams stay productive and focused.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:535 reviews, 459 commits, 216 PRs in 1 year 9 months
Contributions summary:Zixuan contributed to the Zulip server and web application, focusing on both front-end and back-end development. They improved the user interface by moving click handlers and making the alert-box available on portico pages, as well as fixing a screenshot capturing script and making debug mode for the default page parameters follow the setting. The user also contributed to the back-end by using correct typing for update_message_backend, making code changes related to the embedded bot and outgoing webhook payload.
pythonweb-applicationcollaborationzulipjavascript
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.