Joe Kuei-Han Chen

Hands-on engineering leader who takes products from prototype to monetization and scale. Built DeepLearning.AI's engineering organization from scratch and a learning platform serving 5M+ registered users. Technical depth spans AI infrastructure, full-stack development, and agent-assisted engineering.

joechen@stanfordalumni.org | linkedin.com/in/autojoechen

[ Work Experience | Advising and Investing | Technical Skills | Education ]

Work Experience

• Report to founder Andrew Ng; lead engineering, data, security, infrastructure, and incident response; own technology spending and vendor negotiations.
• Built the organization from scratch, personally hiring ~20 people across engineering, product, design, curriculum, project management, and operations; now lead an 18-person engineering team through three engineering managers.
• Built the initial platform prototype hands-on in three months; the platform now serves 5M+ registered users and has supported 100+ course launches.
• Led engineering for the platform's transition from free courses to paid offerings, including persistent sandbox playgrounds, assessments, and certificates.
• Built an LLM API gateway serving 10K+ concurrent users in production (multi-provider routing, fallbacks, quotas, usage tracking, and cost controls) and Jupyter-based infrastructure for hands-on course labs.
• Deliver product updates and urgent fixes hands-on using AI coding agents.

• Led and trained the 30-person global solutions engineering team.
• Created and automated the advanced bidding partner certification program using Selenium, BrowserStack, and AWS Device Farm.

• Designed and developed firmware and software for custom in-house bioreactors used in pharmaceutical, industrial, and synthetic biology applications, plus a web-based LIMS for fermentation engineers and customers.
• Scaled the Raspberry Pi fleet and AWS services using Docker, Python, Flask, React, TypeScript, and C++.

• Designed monetization strategy and solutions for Cheetah Mobile's app portfolio (600M+ monthly active users in 2016) and Musical.ly (later merged into TikTok); the team was exclusively responsible for Musical.ly's advertising monetization.
• Developed product strategy for commercial teams and designed the architecture of Cheetah's ad-tech systems, primarily real-time bidding (RTB).

• Led the ~12-person West Coast professional services team.
• Developed ad SDKs for iOS (Objective-C), Android (Java), and Unity (C#); worked with clients and sales on integration and optimization.

• First engineer: built the consumer-facing desktop and mobile website, the routing algorithm, and operational tools (Python/Django, MySQL, jQuery, Backbone.js).

• Yahoo!, Analyst/Intrapreneur, Optimization Solutions Development (2010–2011): developed optimization solutions in the Yahoo! and Right Media ad marketplace, generating $5M+ in incremental revenue.
• Microsoft, Software Development Engineer, Windows Live (2007–2009): built Windows Live Photo Gallery as part of the Digital Memories Experience team.

Advising and Investing

Startup advisor and investor since 2014, including MAX (acquired by AppLovin in 2018) · Block Party (acquired by DeleteMe in 2026) · CloudX · Kooapps.

Technical Skills

• Languages: Python, TypeScript, C++, Objective-C, Java, C#
• Web and mobile: Next.js, React, React Native, FastAPI, Flask, Django
• Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis
• Cloud and devices: AWS, Kubernetes (EKS), Terraform, Helm, Docker, Vercel, Raspberry Pi fleets, bioreactor firmware
• AI and data: OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, LLM gateways, Jupyter, Airflow, AI coding agents
• Ad tech: iOS, Android, and Unity ad SDKs; in-app bidding; real-time bidding (RTB)
• Test automation: Playwright, Vitest, Selenium, BrowserStack, AWS Device Farm

Education

• HP and Agilent Senior Design Award for an OLPC typing and writing application (Python).

• 2004 honors: Barry M. Goldwater Scholar; Siemens Westinghouse regional finalist; Intel Science Talent Search semifinalist.

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