Samuel Li

San Francisco Bay Area · samxli@gmail.com · linkedin.com/in/samxli · github.com/samxli · samxli.com

Summary

Engineering leader with 15 years across enterprise SaaS and startups: Technical Director at Workday (CTO Office) after engineering-management roles on Workday Extend; Co-Founder & CTO of Zuodao.com (Sequoia-backed, acquired by Alibaba Group, whose translation-AI data pipeline lineage runs into the Qwen LLM family). Manages distributed teams, scales multi-tenant platforms, and operates across US–China markets.

Experience

Workday — Technical Director, Global Data Architecture (Chief Technology Office)

• Direct data-sovereignty, privacy, and cybersecurity strategy for China, India, and Russia, serving 1,400+ multinational customers; manage the Beijing legal entity and Tencent Cloud operations.
• Architected open-source AI Conversation Bridge (WeChat/LINE/DingTalk → local LLMs → Workday via MCP); championed enterprise GenAI adoption (Gemini, Cursor, Ollama).
• Launched AI Interview Agent partnership at Workday Rising 2025 before 30,000+ executives.

Workday — Senior Software Engineering Manager, Workday Extend

• Shaped quality and resilience strategy for Workday's low-code/no-code app builder through go-live; earlier managed UX/UI and emerging-innovations teams (13+ engineers, 2016–2019), delivering core data visualizations and founding the company-wide engineering apprenticeship program.

Zuodao.com / 365fanyi — Co-Founder & CTO (acquired by Alibaba Group)

• Architected the crowdsourced-translation platform end to end: core framework, database schemas, distributed human-in-the-loop workflows.
• Raised seed funding from Zhen Fund (then a Sequoia Capital joint fund) and Series A from CBC Capital; scaled 2 → 100+ people; shipped 70+ releases/year.
• Acquired by Alibaba Group (2015); platform's data-refinement pipeline later fed Alibaba translation models — lineage into the Qwen LLM family.

Allinpay — Vice GM, Internet Payments R&D

• Led internet payments development for one of China's largest third-party payment providers; built the cross-border Customs Declaration API.

Board & Community

• YMCA of San Francisco — Board Director (Jun 2018 – Jul 2024), Emeritus (Jul 2024 – Present): finance committee and CEO-performance oversight of a $100M-revenue nonprofit.
• Cal Poly San Luis Obispo — Industry Advisory Board, CS & Software Engineering (Jun 2024 – Present); guest lecturer, global data regulation.

Earlier

Grip Skateboard Magazine, Shanghai — Art Director (China's first skateboarding magazine) · ReelSurfer (Y Combinator) · Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory · Creator of SimpleDraw (#4 most-downloaded productivity app, original App Store; still shipping).

Education

Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo — B.S. Computer Science (AI & HCI emphasis), Art & Design minor, 2009

Skills

Engineering Leadership · Agentic AI / LLM Integration · MCP · Data Sovereignty · Global Market Entry (US–China/APJ) · Platform Architecture · CI/CD · Agile/Scrum · M&A · Fundraising · Board Governance · Mandarin (native) · English (native)