# Erlei Xu

> Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft

Location: Mountain View, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/erlei

Principal Software Engineer at Microsoft with extensive experience in building high-impact features and modernizing PowerPoint’s architecture, deep expertise in building AI-powered creation experience in PowerPoint. I am the architect for the very first version of PowerPoint Agent system design and became a go-to partner for agentic system design consultation. I led the Narrative Builder effort from prototype to production, advancing implicit/explicit grounding, agent orchestration. I design resilient systems, harden security/telemetry, and drive performance at scale. I work with multi-disciplinary teams across Office, MSAI, and BizChat, translating ambiguous product goals into measurable outcomes. Technically fluent across TypeScript/JavaScript, C# and C++, with hands-on strengths in Web development, micro-service architecture, Windows debugging, LLM orchestration, agentic system design, and experimentation that bridges user value with enterprise reliability.

## Work Experience
### Principal Software Engineer @ Microsoft
Jan 2017 – Present | United States
- Designed and established the PowerPoint Agent architecture, providing the foundational framework that enabled 50+ engineers to build and scale the system.
- Architected PowerPoint Creation in BizChat to leverage our Narrative Builder solution – increased the PowerPoint creation usage 320k+/day. 
- Architected PowerPoint's AI-driven creation (aka Narrative Builder) – achieved 190k+ weekly user sessions, 290k+ weekly usages and significantly boosted user engagement for the Create Presentation feature.
- Led the development of Present to Teams from prototype to dogfood, proposed and owned the design of PowerPoint to Teams protocol, drove up a significant usage for PowerPoint Live.
- Demonstrated leadership and deep technical agility in an Office and SharePoint File IO stack modernization effort, by stepping into File IO engineering, driving early integration prototypes, influencing cross-team API design with Word/Excel/OneDrive/SharePoint partners, and cutting project risk—accelerated delivery by 6–8 weeks. 
- Spearheaded major performance optimizations in PowerPoint Online; applied telemetry-driven debugging to cut Modern Comments 95th percentile load time from 45s to 31s (~30% faster) and established new performance monitoring tools to sustain improvements.
- Led the Windows and Mac PowerPoint file open performance effort, reduced the 95th percentile cloud file open from 40s to 22s (45% faster).

### Software Engineer @ Microsoft(China)
Jan 2013 – Jan 2017
- Contributed to PowerPoint Online micro-service re-architecture, played a key role in the reliability of PowerPoint Online Protocol Service.
- Implemented key feature improvements for Office Online: Direct Print in Word/PowerPoint online; Proofing in Word/PowerPoint Online; Real-time typing in PowerPoint online.
- Contributed and maintained an internal JavaScript MVVM framework for Exchange and SharePoint Online Management portal.


## Education
### Master's Degree in Computer Science
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

### Bachelor's Degree in Control Engineering
Chongqing University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/erlei-xu-b96b10a2

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Source: https://flows.cv/erlei
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/erlei/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-12