We’re excited to kick off “Under the Hood: Mixpanel Engineering Stories,” a new series spotlighting the engineers behind the systems, features, and ideas that power Mixpanel.
Meet Zhengbo Li, a Senior Engineer on our Analysis team, who has been working on some of Mixpanel’s most conceptually interesting frontend problems: Metric Trees, Goals, Metric Directions, and alert improvements.
Metric Trees isn’t a typical UI project. It involves free-form visual interaction, deep collaboration across product and design, and careful thinking about how people explore complex data - not just how it looks, but how it feels to reason with. With a small, tight-knit core team, the work also punches above its weight, influencing how Mixpanel tells its story to customers.
For Goals and alert improvements, the challenge was different: the problem was clear, but the solution wasn’t. It took multiple iterations, debates, and experiments to land on approaches that actually matched how users move through Mixpanel. Along the way, Zhengbo built a much deeper understanding of the customer journey and how people interpret metrics in real workflows.
The impact shows up in quieter but meaningful ways: a more stable frontend, features that are easier to use, and metrics that are easier to understand. Mixpanel handles a lot of data, and charts alone aren’t always enough—this work helps give users more perspective and more intuitive paths to insight.
At Mixpanel, features start with real customer needs, and engineers play a big role in shaping what gets built and why.