# Xinyan Dai > Senior Software Engineer @ PlayStation Location: Seattle, Washington, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/xinyan Software engineer with deep expertise in data platforms, cloud infrastructure, and streaming systems, driving large-scale platform modernization and cost-efficient architecture. As a tech lead, I specialize in building high-performance, low-latency systems with technologies like Flink, Kafka, Spark, Druid, and Databricks, empowering product teams with self-serve, scalable data infrastructure. I'm passionate about turning complex data flows into robust, maintainable, and developer-friendly platforms that power next-gen AI and analytics applications. Skills: Python, Scala, Java, Flink, Spark, Kafka (MSK), Druid, Snowflake, Databricks, AWS (Certified Solution Architect), Kubernetes, Docker, SQL, Git, CI/CD, Grafana, Datadog, Technical Leadership, Cross-team Collaboration, Mentorship & Training ## Work Experience ### Senior Software Engineer @ PlayStation Jan 2022 – Present | San Diego, California, United States • On-Prem Druid to SaaS Migration: Spearheaded migration of real-time analytics platform to Imply SaaS, covering infrastructure provisioning, codebase adaptation, observability setup, and stakeholder engagement—ensuring zero downtime and smooth user onboarding. • Schema Evolution Governance: Drove cross-org initiative to modernize schema evolution with governance guardrails. Led system design, stakeholder alignment, and mentored engineers on schema registry integration and evolution patterns. • Sub-Second Latency Redesign: Architected and deployed low-latency streaming solutions using Apache Flink, Kafka (MSK), and Druid, reducing average query time from 9s to 0.3s (96% improvement) and cutting costs by 98% through Druid-native optimization. • Streaming Framework Modernization: Rebuilt core data ingestion platform using Apache Flink, Kafka (MSK), EKS, and S3, deprecating Oracle and enabling open table formats (Iceberg) on Snowflake for cross-platform interoperability. The pattern enabled other services to leverage Snowflake as backend datastore and saved ~$540k on Oracle licensing and ~$360k annual operational cost. • Databricks Adoption: Led the evaluation and POC of Databricks vs. EMR for batch workloads. Designed migration plan and migrated critical EMR pipelines. Converted 90% of the raw tables from parquet format to interoperable format delta lake. This resulted in a cost savings of ~$350k/year. ### Senior Software Engineer @ Global Traffic Technologies Jan 2021 – Jan 2022 ### Software Engineer @ Global Traffic Technologies Jan 2020 – Jan 2021 | Minnesota, United States • Responsible for front-end web application development and back-end database and services implementation for an IoT device analytical platform that monitors system healthiness and reports KPIs. • Created responsive and user-centric UI components using React/Redux. Requested data and displayed interactive maps with Google Maps API. Built data visualization with Ant Design and D3.js. Handled user authentication flow with AWS Cognito. • Developed Python and serverless framework for back-end services development, including RESTful APIs with API Gateway. Automate data processing with Lambda functions and S3. • Automated the deployment flow with AWS CloudFormation, and Code Pipeline. • Managed and improved the graph-based database and significantly improved the query speed. • Practiced Agile and Scrum in 2-week sprints with 12 other developers. ### Data Engineer Intern @ Global Traffic Technologies Jan 2019 – Jan 2020 | Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area • Developed and deployed data pipelines from S3 to Athena, Quicksight on AWS using Glue and Lambda, realized performance analysis on the dashboard. • Predicted bus travel time with location-based data using time series and random forest in Spark, integrated machine learning algorithms with data pipeline using AWS EMR. • Automated the troubleshooting process by mining device logs using SQL with AWS Glue, Athena and CloudWatch, which reduced the troubleshooting cycle time by 80%. ### Graduate Consultant @ Carlson Analytics Lab Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Minneapolis, MN • Performed ETL, exploratory data analysis using Tableau and R for the coupon effectiveness. • Identified coupon-dependent customers using cluster analysis and provided insights for clients to leverage coupon dependency among player segments. • Presented to clients with data visualization in R, resulting in the 2nd place in the competition over 30 teams. ### Data Science Intern @ UBiAi Technology Jan 2019 – Jan 2019 | Beijing • Developed and deployed an app feature that predicted user destinations using machine learning models, achieved a 3.6% improvement in the retention rate. • Created a Python package that realized the clustering algorithm, also in which combined it with a recommendation system, to identify top N similar users. • Automated gas price and vehicle mpg acquisition by parsing and extracting information from URLs with web scrapper, reducing human resource cost. ## Education ### Master's degree in Computer and Information Technology University of Pennsylvania Jan 2021 – Jan 2025 ### Master of Science - MS in Statistics University of Minnesota Jan 2018 – Jan 2020 ### Bachelor of Arts - BA in Statistics and Psychology Colorado State University Jan 2015 – Jan 2018 ### Bachelor's degree in Psychology East China Normal University Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/xinyan-dai --- Source: https://flows.cv/xinyan JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/xinyan/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-22