About Me

Hello World! My name is Zhiming Xu (许致明). I’m a software engineer at Otter.ai. I build B2B SaaS products. I have / am working on our first public API platform, helping our product achieve HIPAA compliance, and more. Previously, I worked on data ingestion at Lacework, once a cloud security unicorn, and bailed out after its fire sale to Fortinet ^{a disastrous exit}.

I completed my master degree at University of Virginia. I did my undergraduate at Department of Computer Science, Nanjing University.

I was born in Xiangyang (襄阳, literally the north side of the Xiang River), a beautiful city lying by the Han River in the central part of China and lived there before graduating from Xiangyang No.5 High School. I love travel (to historical places) and photography (landscape and architecture). I post my travel photos on Instagram.

I write about my experiences tech startups on my 微信公众号. The tl;dr is the account name, “Do not join a startup”, and examplified here.

In my free time, I enjoy “freelance” research on inference systems. You can check out my past work on my Google Scholar.

I’m always interested in job opportunities around the Washington DC area where I find a great resemblance to my home in its climate.

The reason for above: I stand highly critical of SF bay area climate and lifestyle. I think it’s declared ideal only because there are arguably more serious problems with climates elsewhere in the U.S.