# Sally I. > Engineering at  | Motorsports 🏎️ | Certified Sake Sommelier, Shochu Advisor, WSET Sake Level 3 | RYT-200🧘‍♀️ Location: Cupertino, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/sallyi I'm currently working at Apple, Inc. in Santa Clara Valley, CA. - Data lover. Drive better 🏎️💨, work smarter🧠💡. - • 10 years of software engineering and analytics experience in backend infra, A/B testing frameworks and fraud detection. • Strong networking and interpersonal communication skills. • Exhibit growth mindset culture in management, mentoring, team building and cross-team collaborations. • 6+ years as a Volunteer Champion🏆. • Hosted many STEM events and mentored people ranging from college students to senior engineers. - Mindful yogi with a 200-hr Teacher Training credential. Auto racing enthusiast, driver and fan: Autocrosser (25+ events), track day/time trial participant (40+ events) Certified Sake Professional (2023-), WSET Level 1 & 3 Sake Award (2023-), Certified Shochu Advisor (2024-), Certified Sake Sommelier (2024-), International Kikesake-shi 国际唎酒师 (2024-) ## Work Experience ### Software Engineer @ Apple Jan 2024 – Present | Cupertino, California, United States  Wallet, Payments, Commerce Apple Pay Security - On-device Insight ### Woman@Apple SCV Leadership | Community @ Apple Jan 2021 – Jan 2025 | Cupertino, California, United States Leadership for Women@Apple, a community which attracts, empowers and develops women at Apple, and educates all employees. Also serving as a Volunteer Champion for the Global Volunteering Program, organizing events with non-profits, and providing opportunities for volunteerism and giving back. ### Mentor at Apple Women in Science & Engineering Mentorship (AWSEM) program @ Apple Jan 2022 – Jan 2024 | Cupertino, California, United States AWSEM is a grass roots mentoring program that was started back in 2015 with the main goal of improving the pipeline of women in engineering/technical roles. The program offers 1:1 mentorship to students as well as optional workshops and technical talks to increase their exposure to potential careers in engineering. While we started the program focusing on local students from Stanford/Berkeley, we have now expanded our outreach to multiple mentoring hubs across the US. We're currently working with >100 students from 15 different schools. ### Engineering Manager @ Apple Jan 2021 – Jan 2024 | Cupertino, California, United States Ad fraud/Trust & Safety, Market Integrity @ Ad Platforms Engineering - Led a team of Data Scientists, Data Engineers and MLEs to work on the fraud landscape research, build Spark ETL pipelines to conduct in-depth risk analysis for various ad placements and present the findings to senior leadership. - Led the technical design, reviews and all stages of the development cycle of the Ad traffic fraud detection service that protects against bots and other inorganic behaviors. Identified related opportunities for $XX M+ in annual cloud cost savings. - Managed cross-functional projects, collaborating closely with stakeholders, engineers, and product managers to ensure successful implementation and delivery of data-driven solutions. - Provided technical leadership and guidance to the team, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration and, and continuous learning in the domain of trust and safety. - Leveraged expertise in analytics and ML to develop and implement effective models that tackle spamming/phishing threat vectors. ### Software Engineer @ Apple Jan 2016 – Jan 2021 | Cupertino, California, United States Dec 2018 - Sep 2021 Algo Engineering team @ Ad Platforms Engineering May 2016 - Dec 2018 Apple News Ad Serving @ Ad Platforms Engineering Feb 2016 - May 2016 Apple News NGD Algo team @ iAd Engineering ### Investor @ Shuggie's Trash Pie + Natural Wine Jan 2024 – Present | San Francisco, California, United States Shuggie's democratizes climate action through trashy pizzas and sexy share plates, highlighting upcycled ingredients and sustainable proteins. Affordable natural wines and maximalist funhouse vibes. Your favorite neighborhood house party. Bon Appétit! ### Club Facilitator @ Girls Who Code Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Cupertino, CA @Cupertino Library Girls Who Code = Problem Solving and Impact + Sisterhood + The Core4 Computer Science Concepts - Volunteered 3-4 hours a week facilitating a computer science education club for high school and elementary school girls (6th-12th grades). - Mentored 16 girls to build a website that helps people relax: https://cupertinolibrarygwc.github.io https://github.com/CupertinoLibraryGWC ### Technical Reviewer @ Packt Publishing Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 Reviewed Tableau Cookbook: Recipes for Data Visualization by Ms. Shweta Savale https://www.packtpub.com/big-data-and-business-intelligence/tableau-cookbook-–-recipes-data-visualization ### Teaching Assistant @ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Area CS105 - Introduction to Computing (Fall 2015) Programming - Scratch; basic algorithms and data structures (arrays, searching, and sorting, etc.) Data Use and Manipulation - HTML/CSS, JavaScript, Microsoft Excel Data Visualization - JSON data representation, d3.js Led 2 weekly lab sections, answered questions on Piazza and created exam questions. ### Software Engineering Intern @ Groupon Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 Fraud prevention engineering team @ Groupon Palo Alto ### Teaching Assistant @ University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 CS492 - Senior Project I (Fall 2014) CS493/494 - Senior Project II (Spring 2015) ### Software Engineer Intern @ Bazaarvoice Jan 2014 – Jan 2014 • Worked on the Data Services team to help rebuild the Universal Brand Catalog that enables content moderators to view brand candidates and validate their legitimacy alongside validating their associated synonyms. ### Data Science Intern @ NeuStar, Inc. Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | Champaign, IL • Worked on DNS team at Neustar Innovation Center. • Analyzed large scale DNS traffic data stored in the Hadoop cluster and built a DNS Dashboard for displaying plots generated by Tableau of major characteristics and descriptive statistics of the data. • Utilized Machine Learning techniques to build models for detecting DDoS attacks. ### Intern @ SAP Beijing Software System Co., Ltd, Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 ## Education ### Master of Science (MS) in Computer Science University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ### Bachelor of Science (BS) in Statistics and Computer Science University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ### High School Diploma in Science The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sallyi - Website: http://www.xiaodanzhang.com - Website: http://github.com/Xiaodan --- Source: https://flows.cv/sallyi JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/sallyi/resume.json Last updated: 2026-04-05