About

Derek Zhiyuan Cheng is a highly skilled Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead Manager at Google Brain with over a decade of experience in the tech industry. He specializes in deep learning and recommendation systems, and his expertise in these areas has made him a valuable asset to Google. Derek has an impressive track record of launching successful projects and models at both Pinterest and Google. At Pinterest, he led the efforts to launch the first deep neural net ranking model in Homefeed, and also worked on multi-task learning, embedding models, localization, new user on-boarding, fresh content distribution, and ML infra. He was also heavily involved in recruiting ML talents and curating the Pinterest ML community. At Google, he launched a collaborative filtering model for query expansion in Google Play App Search, a topic embedding model in Google Now, Play News Stand, and Google News's content recommenders, and various user models in Google+. Derek holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University and a B.E. in Computer Science from Beihang University. He has a strong technical background and is proficient in a variety of tech stacks, including senior software engineering, recommendation systems, ML, deep learning, infra, and search. As a Staff Software Engineer and Tech Lead Manager at Google Brain, Derek is responsible for leading and managing a team of engineers and researchers to develop cutting-edge deep learning models and systems. He is a natural leader and a problem solver, and his ability to think outside of the box has enabled him to come up with innovative solutions to complex problems. Overall, Derek is a highly skilled and experienced software engineer and tech lead manager with a proven track record of success in the tech industry. His technical expertise, leadership skills, and ability to innovate make him a valuable asset to any organization.