We are thrilled to continue our Employee Spotlight blog series, where we shine a well-deserved light on the talented individuals who contribute to the success of Emodo. Today, we are excited to introduce you to Yushi Xu, VP of Architecture and Optimization at Emodo.

Yushi’s journey with Emodo started in November of 2022. As VP of Architecture and Optimization, Yushi is the chief architect, responsible for the software and infrastructure architecture of the company. She also oversees data and AI, building Emodo’s data lake, and incorporating the latest AI technologies into Emodo’s products and business.

Get to know Yushi:

Q: What do you like best about working for Emodo? 

A: “Emodo is a small and vibrant team. Like other companies, we have many, many things we wish to build. And we are indeed achieving many at incredible speed. Architecting the system and leading the team to put data and AI at the core under a rapidly iterating environment is challenging but also very interesting.”

Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given? 

A: “Leadership is not a popularity game.”

Q: How do you uphold these principles in your daily life?

A: “Make decisions even when it is difficult or uncertain. Oftentimes it is not possible to find a solution that makes everyone happy, or proves one way is absolutely better than another in advance, but it is more harmful to avoid making decisions than to make a suboptimal decision.”

Q: Can you share a memorable project or achievement during your time at Emodo that you’re particularly proud of?

A: “In the beginning of this year, we set out to build a brand new data lake, streaming and joining many different data sets into a common platform. On top of the data lake, we started to train ML models to optimize our exchange business. We encountered countless technical issues during the building of the data lake, and our very first model did not show improvement over existing methods. With much support from the leadership team and the persistence from the team members, we now have a solid data foundation with all the data ingested and processed, and we have the Intelligent Traffic Optimization model showing great performance and several more ML models for different tasks in the launching pipeline.”

Q: How do you foster a positive and collaborative work environment for your team?

A: “I encourage the team to review each other’s work as much as possible, even if the person is not on the project. I also encourage a trial-and-error mindset, as in data and AI, there are usually too many unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Having unexpected issues is often not due to insufficient planning or careless design, but the nature of the data and AI work.”

Q: What do you like to do in your spare time?

A: “Gardening. We have more than 100 roses in our garden, and many fruit trees and seasonal vegetables. I also watch Japanese animation, play video games, and try hard to keep up with my ballet exercise routine.”

We are proud to have Yushi as a key member of the Emodo family. Stay tuned for more Employee Spotlights as we continue to showcase the incredible talent that drives Emodo’s success.