Danjue Li
Director of Engineering, Google Cloud | LinkedIn
M.S. ’03, Ph.D. Computer Engineering '07
Li, who was the first in her family to go to college, came to UC Davis in 2001, having immigrated from China, where she earned her bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China. She chose UC Davis over offers from Duke and Columbia universities because of the welcoming community she found both on the campus and in the surrounding town.
Li began her professional career with Cisco working in peer-to-peer networking and video streaming. Then she co-founded two technology start-ups, one of which she developed the idea for while at her daughter's soccer games. The company, Sportsdata, provides cloud-based big data analytics solutions in the domain of youth sports and activity management.
Li then served in leadership roles at Equinix and Procore, senior director and VP of Engineering, respectively, before working at Google.
She has become a global leader in technology and served management roles across networking, software engineering, cloud/edge services, and video streaming domains. All the while, Li has continued to give her time as a mentor and speaker. Li served as the American Chapter Lead for Equinix's Women's Leadership Network. She also was a guest speaker at Girl GeekX Equinix Lightning Talk, where she shared her secrets to driving creativity and innovation with young women in STEM fields. Recently, she started the Women@CloudSecurity ERG at Google Cloud and serves as the program's executive sponsor, whose mission is to create a strong community for all women working at Google Cloud Security to support each other and grow together. She has been a mentor of the PLATO–Engineering and Product Leadership Mentorship program since 2020.