Zhijun Yin

Zhijun (ZJ) Yin is a Senior Engineering Manager at Instagram with an extensive background in technology and engineering leadership. Here are some key details about his career and background:

Current Role

Zhijun Yin has been a Senior Engineering Manager at Instagram since September 2021. In this role, he has led two main areas:

1. Instagram Ads Engagement (Quality, Supply) from June 2023 to present
2. Instagram Business Quality, Integrity and Privacy (Ads, Shopping, Creator Monetization, etc.) from September 2021 to June 20231

Previous Experience

Facebook (now Meta):

• Senior Engineering Manager (November 2020 - September 2021)
  • Led the community product ranking team for Facebook's mission to build community
• Senior Engineering Manager (August 2019 - November 2020)
  • Led the search product team, shipping search product redesign and rebuilding hashtag ecosystem
• Engineering Manager (April 2017 - August 2019)
  • Led multiple teams in the search organization

Twitter:

• Senior Engineering Manager (May 2015 - March 2017)
  • Led the recommendation team, powering ML systems for various recommendation products
• Staff Software Engineer (August 2012 - May 2015)
  • Tech led who-to-follow and email notification systems, increasing user engagement

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2007-2012)
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Fudan University (2003-2007)

Research and Expertise

Zhijun Yin's areas of expertise include:

• Data Mining
• Machine Learning
• Information Retrieval

His Ph.D. thesis focused on "Exploring link, text and spatial-temporal data in social media".1

Publications and Impact

Yin has published 20 top conference and journal papers in data mining and machine learning, accumulating over 2000 citations.1

Languages

He is proficient in both English and Chinese, with native or bilingual proficiency in both languages.1

Zhijun Yin's career trajectory showcases his expertise in leading engineering teams at major tech companies, with a focus on search, recommendations, and machine learning systems. His current role at Instagram involves overseeing critical aspects of the platform's business and advertising infrastructure.