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About Austin Xu

Hi, I'm Austin (Yanzhao Xu) — a platform engineering leader with over 20 years of experience building and operating large-scale cloud platforms.

Professional Journey​

I currently lead Cloud Platform teams at eBay, where we've migrated 5,000+ applications to Kubernetes across 100+ clusters and 2M+ pods. My work focuses on:

  • Kubernetes Infrastructure: Building and scaling core K8s infrastructure across multiple regions
  • Application Lifecycle: Automating deployment, scaling, and recovery for cloud-native applications
  • Developer Experience: Creating tools and platforms that make developers more productive
  • SRE Excellence: Applying SLO/SLI, MTTD/MTTR, and incident management best practices

→ LinkedIn: austin-yanzhao-xu

Before leading the Cloud Platform team, I:

  • Built eBay's multi-cloud migration platform and CI/CD automation
  • Architected eBay's internal cloud platforms across three generations (VMware, OpenStack, Kubernetes)
  • Led China Center of Excellence teams delivering platform tools and developer experience

Teaching​

I run a hands-on course series helping professionals build real AI tools with Claude — no coding experience required.

  • Session 1 — Claude & Cowork from Zero: Build a job-search Agent pipeline that analyzes job descriptions, researches companies, drafts outreach, and tracks applications.
  • Session 2 — Build Your Own AI Tools with Claude Code: Transition from tool usage to tool creation. Master Claude Code locally, leverage Skills and MCP ecosystems, and structure your professional expertise into AI-usable knowledge bases.
  • Session 3 — From One Sentence to Finished Work: Slides, posters, websites — one tool. End-to-end Claude Design workflow for non-designers.
  • Session 4 — AI Stock Analysis System: From methodology to runnable Skill — a working agent that runs daily market checks.

All sessions are taught in Chinese, targeting North American professionals who want to integrate AI into their real workflows — not just experiment with prompts.

→ Course portal

Beyond Engineering​

When I'm not building platforms, you'll find me:

  • Playing Tennis: USTA national champion, team captain, and organizer
  • Playing Pickleball: eBay champion (2023, 2024)
  • Building Side Projects: Created a match analysis system using SpringBoot + Vue
  • Mentoring: Running tech/career/finance seminar series
  • Learning: Always exploring new technologies and sharing insights

Education​

  • Master's Degree in EE/Automation, Zhejiang University
  • Bachelor's Degree in EE/Automation, Zhejiang University

Connect​

I'm always happy to connect with fellow engineers, leaders, and anyone interested in cloud platforms, career development, or tennis!