# Shantao Yi

> Software Engineer at Motional

Location: Sunnyvale, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/shantao

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer @ Motional
Jan 2023 – Present | Milpitas, California, United States
Owned the development of Motional’s next-generation data mining system from inception to deployment:
- Transformed vision into robust system & software design, securing leadership buy-in
- Implemented the Python-based mining system with features like code-free configuration (Hydra), efficient & robust data ingestion (AWS S3, PyArrow, Pandera), workflow orchestration (Airflow, Flyte), and parallelized processing (NumPy, Pandas, etc.), achieving a 10x runtime increase
- Reduced annotation costs by 80% with innovative, ground truth-free data mining approaches
- Cut runtime for terabyte-level workloads from days to hours by scaling with distributed compute (Ray on k8s)
- Fostered company-wide collaboration across multiple research teams, mining over 50k scenes to date

### Software Engineer @ TuSimple
Jan 2021 – Jan 2023 | San Diego, California, United States
- Developed a code-free scenario mining tool for complex queries on petabyte-scale data using Looker, LookML, and SQL on top of Trino, empowering a 4x larger, non-technical user base
- Optimized query speed (5x increase) using Looker’s Persistent Derived Tables (PDTs) and query caching
- Led R&D for TuSimple’s first data storage optimization initiative,  achieving ~$600k in annual cost savings
- Built an optimization pipeline processing terabytes of data daily using Python, Trino, AWS S3, and Airflow, leveraging strategies formulated from data modeling with 1B+ user activity records
- Created an interactive org chart with 5000+ monthly page views using JavaScript as a side project

### Software Engineer @ PrecisePK
Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | San Diego, California, United States
PrecisePK is the leading therapeutic drug monitoring software provider trusted by clients globally.

Initiated & led the development of product localization, boosting new leads overseas by ~75%:
- Engineered full-stack using React.js & C++; introduced Scrum and facilitated sprints

### Undergraduate Teaching Assistant @ University of California, San Diego - Jacobs School of Engineering
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | La Jolla, CA
- TA for multiple classes, covering topics such as Java, C, C++, object-oriented programming (OOP), advanced data structures, computer organization and system programming, and advanced search/reasoning/reinforcement learning algorithms
- Held lab hours to analyze and debug students’ code as well as explain related concepts
- Led discussion/review sessions for 400+ students, allowing them to understand their coursework further

### Software Engineering Intern @ Salesforce
Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco, CA
Worked on the Android App for Salesforce’s field service management system:
- Built the TalkBack feature in Java & Kotlin, doubling task success rate for vision-impaired users
- Integrated Kotlin code coverage into the CI pipeline, lowering manual testing costs by 20%
- Decreased task time by 25% with the implementation of the WebView-to-PDF feature using Java


## Education
### Bachelor's degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics
UC San Diego


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/shantaoyi

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Source: https://flows.cv/shantao
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/shantao/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-11