Resume

Liya Du — Product leader for developer platforms: AI infrastructure, developer experience, and technical PLG.

United States (Seattle area) · liya@liya.design · GitHub · LinkedIn · X

Summary

I make things. Designer turned PM turned product leader — 20 years spent turning complex infrastructure into products developers actually adopt: consumption-based database tiers powering AI-agent platforms at 1.2M-database scale, an embedded OS on 10B+ devices, and the rebuild of Microsoft’s developer documentation experience. Currently Head of Product at PingCAP (TiDB / TiDB Cloud); previously Principal PM at Microsoft. I build with AI tools daily and run my product org AI-native — from vibe-coded prototypes to agent-ready docs.

Experience

Head of Product — PingCAP (TiDB / TiDB Cloud) · Remote, Redmond, WA

September 2023 – Present

TiDB is a distributed SQL database; TiDB Cloud is its managed cloud service. I own the product organization — 10+ PMs plus the product design and documentation teams — covering vision, roadmap, pricing and packaging, GTM alignment, and product metrics.

• Led TiDB Cloud’s commercialization overhaul for a ~$40M ARR cloud business: defined and launched the next-generation consumption-based tiers (TiDB X) — self-service signup, onboarding, and in-product upgrade paths — moving the business from sales-led contracts toward usage-based monetization.
• Designed the consumption pricing and multi-tenancy packaging that turned Manus from organic TiDB adopter into TiDB Cloud’s #3 revenue customer: 1.2M+ isolated databases for per-agent state at 10–50× lower cost than conventional cloud databases, economics that made their agent business model viable. Plaud.ai collapsed four data systems into one; active pipeline with foundation-model companies including Kimi (Moonshot AI).
• Defined the agent-native product thesis positioning TiDB as the state layer for AI agents: shaped TiDB Cloud FS (drive9.ai), an agent-native file system extending the company’s storage core, from concept through product — while deliberately steering investment away from the overcrowded agent-memory space, a call the market has since validated.
• Owned the end-to-end product experience: unified two product generations into One Console, and turned documentation into an adoption engine (llms.txt for agent discoverability, AI-reviewed doc PRs) — experience quality repeatedly praised by Pinterest, Airbnb, and other strategic customers at our Customer Advisory Board.
• Upleveled a 10+ PM org into an AI-native product team — PMs and designers ship AI-coded working prototypes before writing specs.

Principal Program Manager — Microsoft, Azure RTOS · Redmond, WA

September 2021 – May 2023

Owned Azure RTOS, an embedded operating system deployed on 10B+ devices, acquired by Microsoft in 2018.

• Set strategy and execution for Azure RTOS as the key enabler connecting embedded devices to Azure, growing attach and usage of Azure services from RTOS-powered devices.
• Led the PM team partnering with major semiconductor vendors (STMicroelectronics, NXP, Microchip, Renesas) to embed Azure RTOS into their SDKs — a platform distribution motion reaching their entire customer base.
• Shipped 15+ releases post-acquisition and rolled them out across the partner ecosystem.
• Grew developer communities, customer feedback channels, and learning content for the platform.

Senior Program Manager — Microsoft, Azure IoT · Shanghai

April 2017 – September 2021

Built end-to-end developer experiences across Azure IoT platform services.

• Designed developer experiences spanning IoT Hub, IoT Plug and Play, and Azure Digital Twins — reducing the friction of building solutions on multiple PaaS services.
• Shipped IoT DevKit 0→1: a reference development kit integrating Azure IoT services with Visual Studio tooling, adopted by 10,000+ developers globally.

Senior UX Designer — Microsoft · Shanghai

December 2015 – April 2017

Rebuilt Microsoft’s developer documentation experience — docs.microsoft.com.

• Designed the internal Open Publishing System, moving Microsoft’s documentation pipeline to GitHub-based workflows.
• Ran user research on core doc features (table of contents, feedback, code blocks) that shaped the platform’s quickstart and reference experience.

Earlier Career

• UX Director — Dianrong.com (fintech), Shanghai (2013–2015): Scaled the UX team 0→30; owned UX across web, mobile, and back-office; co-led front-end migration from JSP/jQuery to AngularJS.
• Product Lead — Cisco, Office of the CTO, Shanghai (2012–2013): Led exploration for Cisco’s next-gen immersive collaboration system (evolved into Cisco TelePresence, Red Dot Design Award); redesigned Cisco DevNet, the developer community portal.
• UX Designer — Microsoft, Shanghai (2009–2012): First cloud offering for Microsoft Server & Tools China (System Center Advisor).
• UI Specialist — SAP, Shanghai (2007–2009): SAP Business ByDesign personalization, field extensibility, and Office integration.

Selected AI & Side Projects

• mcp-server-tidbcloud — open-source MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, TypeScript, that lets LLMs operate TiDB Cloud in natural language: cluster and branch lifecycle, SQL operations, stdio + remote HTTP transports.
• Customer Signal Intelligence — an agentic pipeline with Claude Code as the runtime: pulls customer conversations and feature-request tickets from team systems via CLI + MCP, then synthesizes per-customer and cross-customer prioritized reports answering “what should we build next, and why” — every recommendation backed by conversation evidence. Runs incrementally on a time window and syncs reports to the team knowledge base.
• Daily driver of Claude Code, Codex-style agents, and LLM workflow tooling for product work — specs, prototypes, research synthesis, and team automation.

Skills

Product strategy & roadmap · Developer experience (DX/AX) · PLG & activation funnels · Consumption-based pricing & monetization · 0→1 platform products · Agent-native infrastructure · AI/LLM developer stack (model APIs, SDKs, MCP, RAG, agent workflows) · Team leadership (10+ PMs, design, docs) · User research & design thinking · JavaScript/TypeScript · Embedded C

Languages

English · Chinese (native)

Education

B.Eng. Electrical Engineering — Shanghai Institute of Electric Power, Shanghai (2000–2004) Exchange: Telecommunications Engineering — Czech Technical University in Prague (2003–2004)