Zhifei Yang

System Software Engineer @ TikTok

I am a computer systems software engineer and researcher. Recently, I focus on building high-performance datacenter system software for emerging cloud and AI scenarios.

I got my bachelor's degree from Harbin Institute of Technology and master's degree from ETH Zürich. After graduation, I spent a few years doing research in the University of Chicago and EPFL, before joining TikTok's System Technologies and Engineering team in London, UK.

Publications & Talks

1. Fast and Secure: DPDK Meets Confidential Computing
   Zhifei Yang, Liang Ma
   In DPDK Summit 2023 (video).
2. Odinfs: Scaling PM performance with Opportunistic Delegation
   Diyu Zhou, Yuchen Qian, Vishal Gupta, Zhifei Yang, Changwoo Min, and Sanidhya Kashyap
   In Proceedings of the 16th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI '22).
3. Motivating High Performance Serverless Workloads
   Hai Duc Nguyen, Zhifei Yang, Andrew A. Chien
   In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on High Performance Serverless Computing (HiPS '21).

Experiences

• System Software Engineer, TikTok.
  System Technologies & Engineering - UK, 2023 ~ Now.
  Build and maintain TikTok's EU datacenter, focusing on the performance, stability and cost effectiveness of its low-level system software.
• Research Assistant, School of Computer and Communication Sciences, EPFL.
  Supervisors: Prof. Sanidhya Kashyap and Prof. Babak Falsafi. 09.2021 ~ 12.2022.
  Research on improving the scalability of datacenter resource management via efficient virtualization and scheduling.
• Research Assistant, Large-scale Sustainable Systems Group, The University of Chicago.
  Advisor: Prof. Andrew A. Chien. 09.2020 ~ 06.2021.
  Research on enhancing FaaS, a novel datacenter software architecture, with application-defined performance guarantee.
• Research Assistant and Master Thesis, Systems Group, ETH Zurich.
  Advisor: Prof. Gustavo Alonso. 2018 ~ 2020.
  Research on offloading the functionality of datacenter system software to specialised FPGA accelerators.
• Research Intern, Systems Research Group, Microsoft Research Asia.
  Mentors: Dr. Hucheng Zhou and Dr. Lintao Zhang. 06.2016 ~ 04.2017.
  Research on optimizing the performance of a hot datacenter workload: parallel ML training.

Teaching

• TA of CS-173 Digital System Design, EPFL. Spring 2022.
  
• TA of High-level Language Programming, Harbin Institute of Technology. 2014 ~ 2015.
  

Services

• OSDI'22 and ATC'22 Artifact Evaluation Committee. 2022.
  
• PPoPP'22 Artifact Evaluation Committee. 2021.
  

To seek, to grind, to create.