Hi, friends! 
This month’s Employee Spotlight is Yi Zhao. Here is some information about Yi and his role at Wyze.
Name: Yi Zhao
Pronouns: He/Him/His
Team: Cloud Engineering Team
Role: Director of Cloud Engineering
1. Why did you choose Wyze (Why Wyze)?
Back when I was looking for the next challenge in my career, I wanted to build things that truly affect people’s lives, and it has to be a startup that I can really make an impact towards that goal. Wyze is that company, we build better IoT technology that enables true smart home experience at a fraction of the cost.
2. What team are you on and what do they do?
I support our cloud engineering teams. The platform team focuses on building core IoT functions, including IoT connectivity, Video storage, Auth, User management, Device management, Rule engines and so on; the service team focuses on building innovative software based solutions that combining the capabilities from a variety of smart home devices and AI technology, such as our physical sensor based and camera based professional home security system.
3. How long have you been with Wyze and what do you do here?
I’ve just reached my 2 year anniversary at Wyze earlier this month. My role is to help my teams build things faster, cheaper. Projects that improve engineering efficiency, streamline product integration, adopting new architectures that minimize cloud compute. These engineering excellence all aid in reducing cost, and ultimately makes our product more affordable to more users.
4. What’s your favorite thing about working at Wyze?
The startup experience. A peer from another company once asked me what my team does. IoT? Storage? Auth? The answer is “everything”. Fortunately, the tech leadership role at Wyze is very hands-on, and I get to join my teams building the full backend solution for each of our IoT devices, the app experience, the web experience, etc. I really enjoy the impact my teams bring to our products, and I cannot wait to move on to the next opportunities for improvement and innovation ahead.
5. How have Wyze product(s) impacted your life?
Just becoming a new parent when I joined Wyze, I’ve had quite a few exciting moments when I attend parents group meetups at different places and notice Wyze cams at the door, over the kids’ crib, at the pet’s bowl, into the backyard, and instantly strikes up conversations. A neighbor I met for the first time in the HOA meeting pulled up the Wyze video feed of their crawl space to monitor his sump pump. It’s such a warm feeling realizing our product is truly at work, for everyday people around me, in all possible ways I may have never imagined, and that brings me a sense of joy all the time.
Wyze is growing! The Cloud team is looking for passionate engineers to join our teams.Check out our opportunities here: Wyze Careers.
Want to start your own entrepreneurship but not feeling ready yet? Join us, work with peers that are excited at a growing startup and experience first hand what it’s like.
What is something that was discussed in one of your team slack channels this week?
Our 5 year anniversary of course!
Also Google sign-in on wyze.com is in the final test phase!