Phong Yang

Backend · Data platforms · Control-plane systems

Designing systems that ingest, process, search, and serve complex data at scale.

From enterprise search platforms to financial services to multimodal video AI, I build backend systems that stay fast, observable, and reliable in production.

Impact

Numbers that frame the work

High-level indicators — swap with your own baselines, ranges, or verified outcomes.

  • 12+

    Products shipped

    End-to-end launches across web and internal tools

  • 40%

    Avg. uplift

    Representative lift on core activation after redesigns

  • 8 yrs

    Building in production

    Design systems, APIs, and front-of-stack experiences

  • 24

    Teams partnered

    Cross-functional collaboration from discovery to release

Architecture

Operating domains

A domain map of the stack I operate across — APIs and pipelines, search, inference, cloud, reliability, and the surfaces that expose complex backends.

Domain map

Seven operating domains — not a skills matrix. Each node is an area of ownership; lines on the canvas are suggestive of how work connects across search, media, AI, and control planes in production.

Case studies

Engineering stories

Long-form narratives — problem, architecture, role, stack, and measured impact. Not resume bullets.

  • AI · Video

    Multimodal Video Intelligence Platform

    Backend & distributed systems

    Backend services and processing workflows for multimodal video search, embeddings, and low-latency inference — built to scale as product scope grew.

    GoNode.jsAWSKafkaKubernetesGraphQL

    +45% throughput · sub-second inference · −30% MTTR

  • FinTech · Platforms

    Scalable Customer Platform Services

    Backend & API engineering

    Services and APIs for customer and expert workflows on a large financial platform — reliability, testing discipline, and production stability as the product evolved.

    JavaPythonRESTGraphQLMicroservicesCI/CD

    Higher reliability · safer releases · scalable service foundations

  • Search · Enterprise

    Enterprise Search & Document Processing

    Backend & search infrastructure

    Backend services, Solr-based search, and document pipelines for legal and tax research — performance, indexing, and a path from on-prem toward cloud.

    JavaSpringSolrPythonOracleAWS

    ~30% faster retrieval · stronger relevance · AWS migration path

Trajectory

Career progression

From enterprise search and financial platforms to distributed AI video infrastructure — roles, focus areas, and representative stack.

  1. 2010 – 2016

    Thomson Reuters

    Software Engineer → Senior Engineer, Search & Integration

    Built and operated search and content pipelines for legal and news products at enterprise scale — relevance tuning, indexing SLAs, and resilient ingestion alongside core backend services.

    JavaSpringSolrOracleMavenLinux
  2. 2016 – 2022

    Intuit

    Senior Software Engineer, Consumer & SMB Platforms

    Delivered scalable services behind TurboTax, QuickBooks, and shared financial runtimes — event-driven design, secure multi-tenant APIs, and incremental delivery across product lines.

    JavaKotlinAWSKafkaDockerKubernetes
  3. 2022 – Present

    Twelve Labs

    Staff Engineer, AI Video Platform

    Shapes distributed systems for multimodal video understanding — ingestion, model serving, training orchestration, and cost-aware inference at the boundary of research and production.

    PythonPyTorchgRPCKubernetesCUDAOpenSearch

Capabilities

Capabilities

Each area starts with how I work, then representative tools — not a keyword dump.

Backend & APIs
Designing service layers and developer-friendly APIs that support product features, platform workflows, and long-term maintainability.

Tech highlights

JavaKotlinSpring BootRESTgRPCGraphQLOpenAPINode.js
Distributed Systems
Building asynchronous and event-driven workflows that handle throughput, retries, orchestration, and failure recovery in production.

Tech highlights

KafkaRedisMicroservicesEvent-driven designStream processingSaga & outboxKubernetesLoad balancing
Cloud & Infrastructure
Deploying and operating cloud-native systems with a focus on scalability, automation, and operational resilience.

Tech highlights

AWSTerraformDockerHelmVPC & networkingIAMGitOpsCost & capacity
Data & Search
Working with structured and unstructured data systems, search infrastructure, indexing pipelines, and retrieval performance.

Tech highlights

PostgreSQLElasticsearchOpenSearchCDCBatch & SparkData modelingRelevance tuningObject storage
AI & Media Processing
Integrating ML outputs and media workflows into production systems, from inference APIs to processing pipelines and user-facing experiences.

Tech highlights

PythonPyTorchCUDAFFmpegEmbeddingsVideo pipelinesModel servingGPU orchestration
Observability & CI/CD
Improving reliability through monitoring, tracing, alerting, deployment automation, and strong engineering feedback loops.

Tech highlights

OpenTelemetryPrometheusGrafanaStructured loggingGitHub ActionsArgo CDSLOs & alertingFeature flags

Engineering

What I optimize for

Principles that show up in API design, production operations, and how I trade shipping speed against long-term health.

  • Clear interfaces

    APIs should be intuitive, stable, and easy to evolve.

  • Reliable systems

    Performance means little without observability and failure handling.

  • Scalable architecture

    Systems should grow without becoming operationally fragile.

  • Practical engineering

    The best solution is the one that balances speed, maintainability, and long-term value.

Connect

Let’s build something solid

Tell me about the problem space, timeline, and what a great outcome looks like.

Get in touch

Email contact@phongyang.com or call 320 201 4824. I usually reply within a few business days.