Principal Engineer at The Aspen Group, where I lead platform architecture across five healthcare brands and a 30+ engineer organization. Earlier: grocery e-commerce for 20M+ weekly shoppers, and a sports-tech platform built from scratch.
Architected the foundation of a multi-tenant, scalable commerce platform and led the Gatsby→Next.js migration that launched WellNow — TAG's first multi-tenant application. The same work took key TAG brands, ClearChoice among them, to green Core Web Vitals.
A single-binary Rust CLI that tells you which of your Claude Code and Codex sessions is waiting on you, on what, and for how long. Hooks push events into a local SQLite file; nothing leaves your machine.
A native macOS menu-bar screen recorder and screenshot tool. Record a window, screen, area or a connected iPhone or iPad to a small MP4, WebM or GIF, or mark up a screenshot. Signed, notarized, on Homebrew, and in App Review.
Six store brands plus Peapod on one omnichannel engine — a strangler migration off Oracle ATG, 40+ engineers across four pillars, 20M+ weekly shoppers.
This very site, rebuilt from a static Hugo blog into an AI-native Next.js platform — three AI providers each on one job, an integrated chat assistant, and full English/Chinese support.
PrepHero, built from scratch — an athlete recruitment and camp-registration platform connecting athletes, coaches, and college programs.
Not values — decisions. Each one came out of a replatform, an on-call rotation, or a roadmap fight, and each links to the post where I argue it.
I led five brand teams before I had a single direct report. Influence came from being the go-to on the system, tying every technical call to a business outcome, and refusing the "do it all" trap in favor of delegation and shared ownership.
Leading without authority →Three years modernizing five healthcare brands taught me where the boundary goes: share infrastructure, the API layer, and code — own the deployable. Consolidate first, run it long enough to see the coupling, then split apps, not packages.
The three-year write-up →Vendor matrices, a public technology radar, one observability standard across every brand. Not because the tools matter, but because alignment happens when every team sees the same metrics and the same trade-offs.
The principal's toolbox →A technical bet and a governance bet shouldn't compete for the same roadmap slot with the same estimate. Name which instinct a proposal came from — top-down portfolio or bottom-up problem — before you review it.
Notes from the product summit →
Today I'm a Principal Engineer at The Aspen Group, driving architectural modernization across healthcare brands like Aspen Dental, ClearChoice, WellNow, LoVet, and Chapter. Before that I built e-commerce platforms at Peapod Digital Labs powering grocery chains used by millions, and earlier built PrepHero from scratch at EXACT Sports.
More about me →MS in Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago · BS, Dalian Polytechnic University.
An AI grocery receipt scanner and expense tracker I designed, built, and shipped to the App Store and Google Play. Point your camera at a receipt — get clean, categorized spending insights instantly.
Follow on Product Hunt →Watch the iOS & Android demos →
The work I most want to be known for — notes from where architecture meets the people who maintain it.
Deep dives into system architecture, engineering practices, and lessons learned building scalable products — with the occasional detour into life beyond the terminal.
Read the blog →A podcast of in-depth audio articles on technology, software engineering, and career development. Perfect for the commute or the run.
Listen now →Conference and lightning talks on healthcare platforms, performance, and AI in the web space. Based in Chicago, available for 2026 events in person or virtually.
See talks →❝What colleagues sayAt The Aspen Group (TAG), he went even further by helping architect and build a brand-new platform and onboarding all company brands in about a year. … For perspective, I’ve seen other organizations take more than a year just to bring one brand live. … Any engineering organization would be lucky to have Xinjiang leading its most critical technical initiatives.
— Jen Anderson, PhD · Founder, Astrix 8 Partners
managed Xinjiang directly at Ahold Delhaize USA and The Aspen Group
Xinjiang is a thoughtful technologist that brought interesting insights into our work at EXACT Sports. He was a trusted ally in creating products that supported our success.
— Barry Tarter · Executive Director, EXACT Sports
worked directly with Xinjiang at EXACT Sports
Xinjiang was one of the best developers at our company--he was always the go-to person for our design team when we had questions, simple or complex. We knew he'd always be willing to work with us to find the answer. I'd love the opportunity to work with him again in the future.
— Christine Oh · Product Design Leader, Asana
worked with Xinjiang at Peapod Digital Labs, on different teams
Whether you're untangling a gnarly architecture problem, planning a conference talk, or just want to swap notes on building healthcare platforms — I'm always up for a good conversation. Drop me a line.
Open to: conference talks · architecture conversations · notes on healthcare platforms