Cissy Chen
Staff Software Engineer / Tech Lead Manager @ Google
Cissy Chen
Staff Software Engineer / Tech Lead Manager @ Google
• AI super-individual and staff-level platform engineer with 10+ years building large-scale distributed systems, data infrastructure, and AI-native tooling.
• I turn ambiguous, manual, high-risk operations into reliable, self-service automated platforms — and operationalize agentic LLM workflows that multiply my team's throughput.
• Currently lead the BigQuery Trusted Agentic Platform team (10 engineers), driving org-wide platform, reliability, security, and GenAI initiatives.
• Consistent top performer (3× top 4%, 4× top 25% in 7 years tenure at Google).
Experience
Staff Software Engineer / Tech Lead Manager — Google, BigQuery (Data & Analytics), Kirkland, WA
AI, agent safety & developer productivity
- Lead BigQuery's AI-native transformation across an 800+ engineer org.
- Designed the AI risk-based code-review that scores each CL's production risk and enforces policy-as-code.
- Built risk-aware release automation for BigQuery's rollout/rollback system.
- Built agentic Admin Access control, replacing manual production actions with peer-reviewed, reusable agent scripts.
- Built an automated data-classification / PII system (policy-as-code): 200+ PRs across 6,000+ fields.
- Secured GCP Privacy Working Group approval to connect GenAI agents to production telemetry for debugging and root-cause analysis.
Reliability & platform engineering
- Founded and tech-led "Prod is Lava", a cross-org reliability & access-governance program (across 60 contributors from 6 orgs beyond BigQuery, evolved into a GCP-wide Code Yellow mandate).
- Built a real-time reliability & risk dashboard adopted across GCP.
- Designed and built a reverse proxy for prod/nonprod traffic isolation, enforcing a clean boundary between production and non-production environments.
- Led the Code Yellow "global pushes" workstream, regionalizing global dependencies across 10+ services to enable data residency.
Security, privacy & compliance platforms
- Led a 50+ person cross-org program delivering BigQuery's GDPR data-deletion/retention compliance, enabling clean external audits at scale.
- Tech-led a 6-engineer team building ITAR / export-control compliance software (extensible to FedRAMP / DoD) — engineered software-defined, logical boundaries on GCP's shared infrastructure (different from AWS/Azure's physically segregated GovCloud), unlocking a $9B market.
- Led an effort to extend DoD IL5 (Impact Level 5) controls to customer metadata under strict federal & defense regulations, securing BigQuery's IL5 recertification.
- Engineered compliance coverage across BigQuery's entire data surface — 40 microservices, OLTP databases, the OLAP warehouse, caches, backups and logs.
- Tech-led a 4-engineer team shipping third-party identity federation (OAuth/OIDC/SAML), onboarding 10+ enterprise customers.
Leadership
- Grew and managed a team of 10 engineers: hiring, performance, and promotions, with high manager-survey scores.
- Founded and led the "Women in Data & Analytics" community (1,500+) for four years.
Software Engineer (Backend) — PLAYSTUDIOS, Inc.
- Owned backend for 20+ social-casino titles (~300K DAU, ~$130K/day): gaming-math algorithms, A/B-test configuration, REST APIs, and AI player-simulation tooling.
- Profiled and re-architected shared libraries for performance.
Software Engineer (Full-Stack) — Midnight Studios, Inc.
- Delivered an Xfinity/Comcast interactive TV game end to end (Unity3D + HTML5 motion controller, MySQL, real-time streaming), scaled for high concurrency.
Research Assistant (Computer Vision) — University of Houston
- NIH-funded ($428K) research: multi-Kinect real-time 3D human-body reconstruction and a sensor-based health game. Co-author, Games for Health Journal (PMC5073236).
Selected Projects
BigCat Learning Hub — hub.cissychen.com
- Self-built, AI-powered knowledge platform spanning 25+ domains (AI/ML, mathematics, CS-paper deep-reads, system design, philosophy, psychology, history, investing, leadership, parenting, health, art, writing) — one person producing team-scale output via orchestrated agents.
- Flagship features: Thinker Arena "Thinker Roundtable" (Claude / GPT / Gemini debate + synthesis), Deep Research & Deep Reading, Mental Models & Meta-Knowledge, and a Super-Individual playbook.
- Build write-up: How This Hub Is Built — the fully agent-built content pipeline.
3D Interactive Website — www.cissychen.com
- Designed all content (Photoshop, Maya) and built real-time WebGL 3D rendering with interactive, dynamic media.
Education
M.S., Computer Science — University of Houston, 2014
Specialization in computer vision
B.S., Computer Science — East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, 2011
Publication
Debbe T, Dora C, Madhur R, Tanay B, Yuting Z, Cheng C, Yan L., Zhigang D: “Development of a Teen-Focused Exergame,” Games for Health Journal. PMCID: PMC5073236
BigCat Learning Hub
A self-built, AI-powered knowledge platform — 25+ domains, fully agent-built
A working demonstration of one person producing team-scale, cross-disciplinary output through orchestrated AI agents. The hub spans 25+ domains — from AI/ML, mathematics, CS-paper deep-reads, and system design to philosophy, psychology, history, biographies, investing, leadership, parenting, health & longevity, art, and writing.
Highlights
- Thinker Arena — a multi-model "Thinker Roundtable" where a Claude / GPT / Gemini panel debates a question and converges on a closing synthesis.
- Deep Research & Deep Reading — long-form, cited research reports and structured deep-reads of books and CS papers.
- Mental Models & Meta-Knowledge — distilled thinking frameworks and playbooks for learning how to learn.
- Super-Individual — notes on operating at team scale as a single person with an agent fleet.
- Curated libraries — book recommendations, biographies, and domain reading lists.
- Fully agent-built pipeline — every site is generated and maintained by an orchestrated agent workflow (how this hub is built).