Zhang Liang is the founder and CEO of SphereEx, an Apache Member, the founder of Apache ShardingSphere ElasticJob, the PMC Chair, Tencent Cloud TVP, and Microsoft MVP. Zhang is an open source enthusiast and thought leader in Java-based distributed architectures. Currently, he focuses on turning Apache ShardingSphere into an industry-leading distributed database solution. His 2019 book, Future Architecture: From Service to Cloud Native, was well received by both critics and the community. His 2022 paper, Apache ShardingSphere: A Holistic and Pluggable Platform for Data Sharding, was published on ICDE. Zhang was awarded titles in the Top Ten Distributed Database Pioneers of 2021 by CSDN, and the 33 China Open Source Pioneers in 2021 by SegmentFault.