Yi-An Lai
Technical leader who scaled teams 2x and cut API timeouts 80% at high-growth startups. Fullstack engineer passionate about infrastructure, platform, and developer experience — building tools that delight both customers and engineers.
Skills
Fullstack Web Development, Python, Javascript, Typescript, AWS RDS, SQS, Postgres, Elastic Search, GraphQL, React.js, Chrome Extension, Java, Spring Boot, Kubernetes, Helm, Docker
Experience
Gem | Software Engineer - Tech Lead Manager
August 2023 - Present
- Scaled engineering team 2x: Onboarded and integrated a remote team in Bulgaria. Ran weekly syncs, set quarterly OKRs, and established cross-timezone collaboration workflows.
- Reduced API timeouts 80%: Led quarter-long performance initiatives including query tuning, index optimization, and read-replica utilization. Refactored data ingestion pipelines to meet SLAs for high-volume enterprise customers.
- Delivered enterprise features: Shipped SAML SSO, RBAC, SCIM, audit logging, and OAuth-based API integrations for $150K+ ARR customers. Partnered with the PM to prioritize roadmaps.
- Standardized observability: Implemented OpenTelemetry (OTel) across frontend and backend services, reducing vendor lock-in and unifying monitoring practices org-wide.
Gem | Software Engineer
May 2022 - August 2023
- Completed MV3 migration: Directed a team to complete a time-sensitive migration of Gem's Chrome extension (20,000 active users) to MV3 with minimal customer disruption. Migrated the codebase to TypeScript and modernized the observability stack to enhance developer experience.
- Shipped Talent Marketing suite: Built forms, landing pages, and event management from scratch — enabling recruiters to run campaigns without marketing team dependencies. Drove $300K in new ARR.
MuleSoft | Senior - Lead MTS
April 2017 - May 2022
- Built Kubernetes lifecycle agent: Developed tooling to manage Mule application deployments in Kubernetes clusters. Designed event-stream architecture enabling reliable monitoring for 1000+ deployments per cluster with minimal resource overhead.
- Led EKS migration: Migrated from legacy EC2 infrastructure to Amazon EKS, improving scalability and reducing costs. Achieved 99.99% uptime, cut application startup times 30%, and increased deployment density.
MuleSoft | Member of Technical Staff (MTS)
April 2015 - April 2017
- Pioneered React component library: Built reusable UI components for CloudHub (MuleSoft's PaaS), later adopted company-wide. Developed and maintained core frontend features serving enterprise deployment workflows.
Education
UCLA, Los Angeles - MS, Computer Science
September 2013 - March 2015
National Taiwan University, Taipei - BS, Electrical Engineering
September 2007 - June 2011