Austin, TX  ·  Open to conversations

Ankun Yu

Engineering Manager / Tech Lead

16+ years designing, building and scaling web platforms. I lead the team behind Priceline's B2B hotel supply chain — and still own the architecture myself: APIs, event streaming, data lake, and the AI agent tooling on top.

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  • 16+years shipping
  • 4engineers led
  • 7companies, 2 continents

01 About

I build the parts of a product that other teams build on top of — supply-chain integrations, workflow engines, extensibility APIs, event pipelines. The kind of work where a good abstraction pays for itself for years, and a bad one is felt by everyone.

I'm an Engineering Manager and Tech Lead at Priceline, leading a team of four engineers on the B2B hotel supply chain platform — affiliate and supplier integration, content, itineraries, booking and cancellation, and pricing. I own the architecture across that domain and still write code, most recently on event streaming, our data lake, and the AI agent and MCP server work layered on top.

Managing hasn't meant leaving engineering behind. I work closely with product on scoping and delivery timelines, run regular 1:1s built around each engineer's growth, and keep the meeting load deliberately low — a team protected from calendar noise ships more.

Before Priceline I spent four years at Procore Technologies as a Principal Engineer and tech lead, building workflow and extensibility features for the platform. Earlier, at Rooster Teeth, I led the migration of the main site off PHP onto Rails and built the services behind accounts, subscriptions and video. Before that I founded and grew an engineering team in Beijing, relocating to Austin in 2016.

I care about tests that actually catch things, code review that teaches, and systems that are boring in production.

02 Stack

The tools I reach for, grouped by what they're for.

</> Languages

  • Ruby
  • Go
  • JavaScript
  • SQL
  • TypeScript

{ } Frameworks

  • Ruby on Rails
  • React
  • Sidekiq
  • RSpec
  • jQuery
  • Bootstrap

[ ] Data

  • PostgreSQL
  • DynamoDB
  • MySQL
  • Elasticsearch
  • Redis
  • Data lake

↑ Infrastructure

  • AWS
  • ECS
  • Docker
  • EC2
  • CI/CD

⇄ Architecture

  • Event streaming
  • Distributed systems
  • Event-driven design
  • REST & API design
  • OAuth / JWT
  • Service decomposition

◆ AI & Agents

  • AI agents
  • MCP servers
  • LLM integration
  • Tool orchestration

★ Leadership

  • Engineering management
  • Tech lead
  • 1:1s & mentoring
  • Roadmap planning
  • Design review
  • Code review
  • Product partnership

03 Experience

Seven roles, 2009 to now. The short version.

  1. 2024 – Present

    Engineering Manager & Tech Lead

    Priceline · Austin, TX

    • Lead a team of four engineers building and operating the B2B hotel supply chain platform — affiliate and supplier integration, content, itineraries, booking and cancellation, and pricing management.
    • Own architecture design across the domain, spanning API development, event streaming pipelines and the data lake behind reporting and analytics.
    • Built AI agent and MCP server capabilities into the platform.
    • Partner with product management on scoping, planning and delivery timelines; mentor engineers through regular 1:1s focused on growth, and keep the meeting load deliberately low so the team's time goes to building.
    • Engineering management
    • Architecture
    • API design
    • Event streaming
    • Data lake
    • AI agents
    • MCP
  2. 2020 – 2024

    Principal Engineer & Tech Lead

    Procore Technologies · Austin, TX

    • Tech lead in the Flexibility, Scalability & Reliability division — owned architecture decisions, ran design reviews, and mentored engineers across the team.
    • Built the Activity Feed service on DynamoDB, tracking notifications and activity across the platform at scale.
    • Shipped Custom Workflows, a visual engine letting customers define approval processes spanning multiple tools.
    • Delivered Custom Fields, giving customers first-class extensibility through both UI and public API.
    • Ruby on Rails
    • DynamoDB
    • AWS
    • React
    • Architecture
  3. 2017 – 2020

    Staff Engineer

    Rooster Teeth Productions · Austin, TX

    • Led the migration of the main site from PHP to Ruby on Rails.
    • Built the core platform services: Business (accounts, subscriptions, payments), Notify (publish/subscribe engagement), Community (social), and RT-OAuth (JWT auth server).
    • Wrote the Watch Time Collector in Go to track viewing history across the SVOD platform.
    • Containerized services with Docker on AWS ECS; delivered GDPR compliance tooling and Shopify integration.
    • Rails
    • Go
    • Docker
    • ECS
    • OAuth / JWT
  4. 2012 – 2016

    Engineer → Team Lead

    Focus Solutions · Beijing → Austin, TX

    • Founded and grew the Beijing engineering team delivering commercial truck insurance systems for US clients.
    • Built Contractor Connection, SmartStart and DTC policy generation, plus GlobalSearch reporting across SQL Server clusters and SSO/CAS authentication.
    • Owned AWS deployment and worked directly with customers across multiple US locations. Relocated to Austin in 2016.
    • Rails
    • SQL Server
    • AWS EC2
    • SSO / CAS
    • Team building
  5. 2011

    Cloud Services Engineer

    Sinovation Ventures — XingCloud · Beijing

    • Built a cloud monitoring system with RRD-Tool for virtual machine metrics; extended Redmine for project and game configuration.
    • Mentored the team through its adoption of Ruby on Rails.
    • Ruby
    • Monitoring
    • Cloud
  6. 2010

    Ruby Engineer

    Idapted · Beijing

    • Built CRM and course-design systems for an English-learning platform, decoupling services behind ActiveResource interfaces.
    • Ruby
    • Service design
  7. 2009

    Ruby on Rails Developer

    First engineering role

    • Shipped e-commerce and CMS platforms, including gift-retail and course-design sites.
    • Rails
    • E-commerce
    • CMS

04 Contact

Happy to talk about engineering management and staff / principal roles, platform architecture, or anything Rails.