# About David Jiang Independent builder working at the intersection of finance, AI, and classical Chinese thought. Concerned with making hidden structure visible: in markets, in language, in the self-deceptions organizations and people run on. Reads across Daoist, Confucian, Gestalt, somatic, and probabilistic traditions. Works in English and Mandarin; lives in Shanghai and San Mateo, California. AI products, from problem to deployment. 10+ years building ML data tooling, drone operations software, and full-stack products, combining product judgment with hands-on ownership of architecture, implementation, and release. - Based in Shanghai, China (U.S. citizen; also San Mateo, California) - Languages: English (native), Mandarin Chinese (near-native) - Email: dj@theory-a.com - Founder of Theory A: https://www.theory-a.com ## Experience - **Principal / Founder, Theory A LLC** · Mar 2020 – present · Shanghai and San Francisco Bay Area. Solo-founded financial-intelligence platform plus the AI, visualization, and writing projects listed above. Owns product from customer research through implementation and deployment. - **UX Developer, Google (Wing / X)** · Jan 2019 – Mar 2020 · San Francisco Bay Area. Delivered airspace-management software used by the Australian government, replacing a JavaScript proof of concept with a production Angular application. Built drone telemetry and fleet-management interfaces with flight-operations teams. - **Lead UI Developer, Apple (Siri)** · Jan 2016 – May 2018 · Cupertino. Led UI engineering for Siri's internal ML data platform used by hundreds of contractors across locales. Built training-data and evaluation workflows, including ontology navigation and labeling. Owned UI architecture, reviews, testing, deployment, and mentoring. - **JavaScript Developer, Splunk** · Jul 2014 – Jan 2016 · San Francisco. Backbone.js development for a network-data ingestion and analysis application. - **Software Engineer, Neustar** · Jan 2014 – Jul 2014 · San Francisco Bay Area. AngularJS web development. Education: Cornell University, M.S. Computer Science (Cornell Tech, NYC). Co-inventor, U.S. Patent 10,700,950 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10700950B2/en). ## Approach: the Theory of Constraints applied to AI AI can help one team produce more while the organization delivers less. More proposals, code, or content can flood a bottleneck with review requests, rework, and coordination, consuming the capacity that determines end-to-end throughput. David applies the Theory of Constraints to find where AI can relieve that pressure and increase what actually gets delivered. Full essay: https://dj.theory-a.com/theory-of-constraints ## Work with me - **AI product discovery and prototyping** (Startups, product teams, and founders): Taking an AI product idea from problem framing to a working prototype and first deployment. Full-stack ownership: architecture, implementation, evaluation, and release. https://dj.theory-a.com/about-me - **Internal tools and workflow integration** (Engineering and operations leaders): Designing and building internal AI tooling that relieves a real organizational bottleneck instead of flooding it. Informed by the Theory of Constraints. https://dj.theory-a.com/theory-of-constraints - **Technical mentorship and organizational AI literacy** (Teams adopting AI tools): Hands-on sessions that help teams and individuals use AI agents and LLM tools with judgment: what to delegate, how to verify, where it breaks. https://dj.theory-a.com/about-me - **In-person AI lessons in Shanghai** (Adults and parents in Shanghai): Practical one-on-one AI lessons for adults and parents near Zhongshan Park, Shanghai. Taught in English or Mandarin. No programming experience needed. https://dj.theory-a.com/services?lang=en Email dj@theory-a.com with a short description of the problem. ## Stance Across everything I'm trying to make hidden structure visible: in markets, in language, in the self-deceptions organizations and people run on. The concerns I keep returning to, in code and in writing at [Idea Garden](https://garden.theory-a.com): - **Self-deception as the central human problem**: the gap between what we claim to believe and what we actually feel or do. - **Embodied emotion as suppressed intelligence**: the Gestalt / somatic / Focusing tradition taken seriously. - **Structure over character**: office politics, geopolitics, and relationship dynamics as emergent from structure, not moral failure. - **Pattern recognition across domains**: honest comparative reading across Daoist, Confucian, Gestalt, somatic, and probabilistic frames. Frameworks I've coined and use as shorthand: *Neural Annealing*, *Mask and Daemon*, *Weaponized Taste*, *Pattern Integrity*, *Fluid Plurality*. Influences I return to: Jed McKenna, Keith Johnstone (*Impro*), James Carse (*Finite and Infinite Games*), Albert Hirschman (*Exit, Voice, and Loyalty*), Adlerian psychology, the Daoist and Confucian classics. I work in English and Mandarin and live between San Mateo and Shanghai, which is as much an epistemic stance as a logistical one: the two information ecosystems don't agree, and the disagreements are where the signal is. ## Frequently asked questions ### Who is David Jiang? David Jiang is a software engineer and founder of Theory A LLC. He previously worked at Apple (lead UI developer on Siri's internal machine-learning data platform) and Google (UX developer on Wing / X drone operations software). He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Cornell University and is a co-inventor on [U.S. patent 10,700,950](https://patents.google.com/patent/US10700950B2/en) (filed as Wei Jiang). ### What does David Jiang work on? AI products and research tools (Hermes agent workflows, Komi Count on-device computer vision, GloVe Galaxy, Doodle Bench), financial visualization (Theory A, options chain and Kelly criterion tools), and bilingual English/Chinese writing and philosophy projects (A Casual Dao De Jing, Meowmeow & Woofwoof, Harmonious Rites). ### Is David Jiang available for consulting, contract, or collaboration work? Yes. David is open to AI product discovery and prototyping, internal tools and workflow integration, technical mentorship, and organizational AI literacy work. Email [dj@theory-a.com](mailto:dj@theory-a.com) with a short description of the problem. ### Does David Jiang offer AI lessons? Yes. David gives in-person, practical AI lessons for adults and parents near Zhongshan Park in Shanghai, in English or Mandarin. No programming experience is needed. Details are at [dj.theory-a.com/services?lang=en](https://dj.theory-a.com/services?lang=en). ### Where is David Jiang based and what languages does he work in? David lives between Shanghai, China and San Mateo, California, and is a U.S. citizen. He works in English and Mandarin Chinese and treats the gap between the two information ecosystems as a source of signal. ### How do I contact David Jiang? Email [dj@theory-a.com](mailto:dj@theory-a.com). You can also find him on [LinkedIn (david-jiang-74618251)](https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-jiang-74618251/) and [GitHub (dlwjiang)](https://github.com/dlwjiang). His writing lives at [dj.theory-a.com/writing](https://dj.theory-a.com/writing) and his idea garden at [garden.theory-a.com](https://garden.theory-a.com). ### What is David Jiang's intellectual stance? Across code and writing he tries to make hidden structure visible: in markets, in language, and in the self-deceptions organizations and people run on. Recurring concerns are self-deception, embodied emotion as suppressed intelligence, and structure over character. He works deliberately across Daoist, Confucian, Gestalt, somatic, and probabilistic frames, and has coined the frameworks Neural Annealing, Mask and Daemon, Weaponized Taste, Pattern Integrity, and Fluid Plurality. ## Projects ### Finance and markets - [Theory A](https://www.theory-a.com/) (Finance · Visualization): Financial intelligence platform that finds cheap convexity by visualizing dislocations between short-term traders extending Black-Scholes random-walk assumptions into the future and long-term investors who care about underlying earnings and revenue. - [Option Chains](https://www.theory-a.com/optionsChain/NVDA) (Finance · Visualization): Option chain visualization that shows volatility and expected moves inferred from trading activity. Plotting contracts at their breakeven points makes the implied-move cone visible. - [Kelly Game](https://www.theory-a.com/kellyGame) (Finance · Game): Interactive game that trains investor intuition for position sizing under the Kelly criterion. ### Machine learning and AI - [Hermes](https://hermes.theory-a.com) (Agent workflows & memory): Personal AI workspace that turns research and recurring tasks into reusable agent workflows. Carries context across sessions, records decisions, and packages methods as skills so agents improve over time. - [Komi Count](https://komi-count.theory-a.com) (Computer Vision): Fully local Go / Baduk / Weiqi image scorer using WebAssembly and on-device computer vision models. Nothing leaves the browser. - [GloVe Galaxy](https://glove.theory-a.com) (NLP · Visualization): Interactive 3D visualization of GloVe word embeddings for traversing the semantic geometry between words as constellations in vector space. - [Neural Network Visualization](https://mnist.theory-a.com) (Machine Learning): Interactive visualization of MNIST neural-network training, a companion to 3Blue1Brown's series. - [Doodle Bench](https://doodle-bench.theory-a.com) (AI · Benchmark): Compares AI models through their drawings, showing how each model interprets the same prompt alongside its generation time. - [World History](https://world-history.theory-a.com) (AI · Timeline): LLM-powered timeline creator that contextualizes historical events by weaving threads such as World War II, Chinese history, the Hermès brand, and quantum mathematics along a shared axis. ### Interactive tools - [Stickers](https://stickers.theory-a.com) (Interactive Experience · Search): Searchable collection of paper-cut memories that uses natural-language search to find the right feeling, then lets you drag and pin the keepsake that resonates. - [Cadence](https://cadence.theory-a.com) (Typing · Adaptive Practice): Adaptive typing trainer that models skill as a property of 26x26 bigram pairs to target typing bottlenecks precisely. - [Persona](https://persona.theory-a.com) (Personality · Visualization): Interactive personality explorer: shape a trait profile, find your closest fictional-character match, and compare the fit visually. ### Writing, philosophy, and art - [Poison](https://poison.theory-a.com) (Philosophy · Moral Alchemy): Interactive cabinet of moral alchemy revealing moral poisons, their counterfeit remedies, hidden premises, and working antidotes. - [A Casual Dao De Jing](https://a-casual-dao.theory-a.com/) (Philosophy · Translation): Approachable, casual re-imagining of the Dao De Jing, a text too often treated as esoteric. Proofread against the original Chinese. - [A Casual Gita](https://a-casual-gita.theory-a.com/) (Philosophy · Translation): Companion to A Casual Dao De Jing for the Bhagavad Gita, leaning more heavily on LLM translation as collaborator. - [Meowmeow & Woofwoof](https://meowwoof.theory-a.com/gallery) (Fiction · Bilingual): Chinese and English anthology of adult fables about the anomie of liquid modernity, presented as Socratic dialogue between a dog and a cat. - [Harmonious Rites](https://constitution.theory-a.com) (Satire · Philosophy): Satirical constitution in the tradition of Lu Xun, who criticized Confucian values as 吃人 (cannibalistic). Argues that the dynamic is even more prevalent today despite greater material wealth. - [Yuan Ling Tarot](https://tarot.theory-a.com) (Art · Archetype): Custom tarot deck embodying primal-spirit archetypes, co-designed with Midjourney. - [Path & Play](https://www.youtube.com/@PathAndPlay) (Interviews): Ongoing interview series bridging the gap of understanding between China and the West. ### Earlier - [Bayes Impact Hackathon 2014](https://bayeshack.devpost.com/submissions/30292-detecting-and-visualizing-prostitution-rings-teamthorn) (Civic Tech): Grand-prize-winning visualization tool (team of five) for detecting hidden prostitution rings to help prevent child sex trafficking. - [D3.js Data Visualization](http://dlwjiang.github.io/d3portfolio2/) (Data Visualization): Early data-visualization experiments built with D3.js.