AI-Native Fullstack · FinTech Payments · Tokyo UTC+9 · 4–6h CET/CEST overlap

Kai Li

AI-Native Full-Stack Engineer  ·  ~8 yrs experience  ·  Payments / Money Movement  ·  Global Remote

Currently at ELESTYLE Inc.  ·  Tokyo
TypeScript fullstack Node.js / Nest.js Next.js / React PostgreSQL / Redis Payments / PCI-DSS / bank rails Webhooks / idempotency LLM Agents / Tool Calling / MCP Global remote · 4–6h CET overlap Highly-Skilled Professional Visa
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About

Full-stack engineer with ~8 years of experience, most of it in payments and fintech. Currently at ELESTYLE, a Japanese fintech, building the PCI-DSS v4.0-compliant payment platform elepay — 200k+ merchants across Japan, clients including SMBC, Kirin, and Coca-Cola. Deeply involved in the design and implementation of the merchant, payment, webhook, Partner API, and transaction-ledger core modules.

Systems where mistakes cost money: a bank-grade compliant debit flow (SMBC recurring-debit project, Java backend + frontend end to end), idempotency & deduplication (a Redis-backed persistent dedup window taming an MQTT reconnect storm), a webhook event-type refactor plus Merchant Keys API integration, PostgreSQL ledger modeling and query optimization (response times −40%+), fine-grained RBAC isolation, and observability — surfacing production issues from event-tracking data instead of waiting for user reports. Earlier, integrated WeChat Pay / Alipay / LianLian Pay across both B2B and B2C flows.

AI-native, not a chat box bolted on: spotted a support bottleneck and shipped a production AI support agent from 0 to 1 (RAG as the evidence layer + multi-turn dialogue + tool calling + human handoff on low confidence) — zero-cost operation, satisfaction +20%, manpower −30%. Also built flight-monitor, a multi-source monitoring agent (tool calling + MCP server + structured output + multi-source fallback + Playwright + TiDB) running long-term on Docker. Claude Code / Codex is my daily primary development environment, and I have hands-on experience bringing AI tooling into a team's workflow.

How I think about model uncertainty: in money-related paths, a model should only produce structured output from an evidence-grounded context, call tools under least-privilege control, and leave human confirmation, full audit trails, and a rollback path for anything high-risk — AI can diagnose and recommend, but it should not execute money movement on its own.

End-to-end delivery: from requirement clarification through technical design, frontend and backend implementation, testing, deployment, and production observation — I own the whole chain rather than a slice of it. Five years of team leadership (led a digital-twin visualization SaaS from 0 to 1 at DTStack into the group's largest, most stable cash-cow product), always hands-on: still writing core code and owning production incidents while leading.

Global remote & timezone: based in Tokyo (UTC+9), with a stable 4–6 hour daily overlap with CET/CEST (Tokyo 17:00–23:00 ≈ CET 09:00–15:00 / CEST 10:00–16:00), and I can start earlier when needed. Async by default — docs, issues, and code review carry the context. Native Chinese; working English for technical docs, code review, and async collaboration; business Japanese.

Experience~8 years
LocationTokyo (UTC+9)
CET/CEST overlap4–6 h / day
PaymentsPCI-DSS · bank rails
AI engineeringAgents · MCP · RAG
Leadership5 yrs · hands-on
GitHub repos160+
LanguagesZH / EN / JA
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Experience

ELESTYLE Inc. 2024.12 — Present
Full-Stack Engineer · Core Payment Platform (end-to-end)
Top Japanese fintech · elepay payment platform serving 200k+ merchants nationwide · clients include SMBC, Kirin, Coca-Cola · PCI-DSS v4.0 / ISO 27001 certified
  • Delivered the webhook event-type refactor, Merchant Keys API integration, payment-URL expiry, and other core platform capabilities serving merchant and partner / multi-provider integration scenarios
  • Tamed an MQTT reconnect request storm in KDS: throttling + a Redis-backed persistent dedup window for message idempotency, guaranteeing consistency and reliable delivery under high concurrency (the same approach applies to webhook redelivery and async-job dedup)
  • Core developer on the SMBC × elepay ACQ recurring-debit project: hands-on Java backend API development plus leading the frontend, contributing to business-rule design and the full test loop — shipped a bank-grade compliant debit flow in Japan
  • Contributed to PostgreSQL schema design and query optimization, modeling payment ledgers and merchant configuration — response times down 40%+
  • Proactively discovered and root-caused a session-loss bug from behavioral tracking data (not user reports), fixing a hard production issue data-first
  • Refactored the Wait module: container resource efficiency +11%, runtime performance +50%
  • Own full-stack development and code review across the oneQR / Wait / KDS / Dashboard core SaaS products, covering both customer-facing and back-office surfaces
TypeScriptReact JavaVue PostgreSQLRedis WebhooksIdempotency MQTT PCI-DSSSMBC
Yizhiwei Tech / DTStack (Hangzhou) 2021.1 — 2024.12
Senior Frontend Engineer & Frontend Lead
Big-data SaaS · EasyV digital-twin visualization platform · grew into the group's largest, most stable cash cow
  • Spotted a customer-success bottleneck and independently shipped a production AI support agent from 0 to 1: a RAG knowledge base as the evidence source, multi-turn dialogue, tool calling against ticket/order data, and fallback to a human on weak retrieval — zero-cost operation, satisfaction +20%, manpower −30%
  • Led the platform from 0 to 1: owned the overall technical design, module breakdown, and implementation of key modules (editor / blueprint / assets), accountable for final delivery
  • Designed fine-grained button-level RBAC with multi-tenant isolation; decoupled the codebase into monorepo submodules
  • Multi-dimensional performance work (HTTP/2, CDN, Service Worker, on-demand loading, data pre-caching): first-paint efficiency +60%
  • Managed the frontend team: hiring, talent development, technical training, and code-review standards; traveled on-site to unblock stalled customer projects
ReactTypeScript WebGLNest.js RAGAgent Team Leadership
Zhejiang Yingshu Biotech 2018.5 — 2020.12
Frontend Engineer → Frontend Lead
  • Delivered full payment integration (WeChat Pay / Alipay / LianLian Pay), independently building all B2B and B2C payment flows
  • Owned frontend technology selection and base architecture across the PC / H5 / mini-program / POS stacks
  • Led the H5 rebuild with SSR + skeleton screens, markedly improving first-screen experience
  • Unified engineering standards (ESLint + code review); migrated the mini-program from mpvue to Taro
  • Built Node.js + Puppeteer automation crawlers: scheduled scraping → Excel generation → automated email delivery
VueReact TaroNode.js Mini-program
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Skills

Backend & Data
TypeScriptNode.js Nest.jsJava PythonFastAPI PostgreSQLRedis Async jobs / queuesMQTT REST / Partner APIDocker
Payments & Money Movement
PCI-DSS complianceIdempotency / dedup Webhook reliabilityMessage consistency Bank integrationsPayment integrations Ledger modelingRBAC ObservabilityProduction debugging
AI Engineering
LLM APIs / agent workflowsTool calling Structured outputMCP servers RAG / evidence retrievalFallback / human handoff Claude CodeCodex Playwright
Frontend
ReactNext.js TypeScriptVue SSRWebGL
Delivery & Collaboration
End-to-end ownershipTechnical breakdown Code reviewCI/CD Doc-driven async workHiring & mentoring
Build & Cross-Platform
ViteWebpack monorepo ElectronFlutter WeChat Mini Program
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Open Source & Projects

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Contact

Email
[email protected]
GitHub
nianyi778
X (Twitter)
@nianyi778
Phone / WeChat
+86 175 5728 2778
Location
Tokyo, Japan