Michael
Yu

The hardest problems in hardware aren't the ones you solve — they're the ones you prevent. Over 15+ years across Meta, Google, Amazon, and Oculus, I've learned that the difference between programs that ship on time and programs that don't comes down to three things: the right engineering strategy set early, the right team structure to execute it, and the discipline to front-load risk before it becomes a schedule crisis.

I operate at the intersection of technical direction and organizational design — defining product architecture, structuring teams for velocity and accountability, and making the high-stakes tradeoffs between cost, schedule, quality, and industrial design that determine whether a product ships as envisioned or ships as a compromise.

At every company, I've built engineering organizations from scratch — standing up PD teams, establishing design review cadences, creating tolerance analysis standards, and codifying processes that outlast any single program. I've led both JDM/ODM and in-house detailed design models at scale, and I know when each is the right call. Native Mandarin fluency gives me a structural advantage in China-based manufacturing, enabling direct technical communication at the factory floor level.

I also actively integrate AI tools into hardware engineering workflows — from accelerating FEA interpretation and risk analysis to building custom tools that help entire teams make faster, higher-confidence decisions. The future of hardware leadership isn't just about what you know — it's about how fast your organization can learn and adapt.