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He came to Northeastern for a career in tech. He helped build a bakery along the way.
As Denfeng "Jackie" Jiang navigated his master's coursework, he still found time to co-manage a mochi donut bakery with his wife, PeiPei. Now, as they leap to Seattle for Jiang's new job with Amazon, the family isn't done baking.
By day, Denfeng “Jackie” Jiang works with algorithms and data. By night, he helps run a fast-growing Asian pastry business his wife Pei Pei built around her coveted mochi donuts.
For Jiang, who completed his master’s in computer science as part of the Align program this past spring, both worlds revolve around the same thing: bringing people together. Whether through study groups with classmates or pastries shared among customers, he has found meaning in creating spaces where people can experience joy and connection.
Before joining the Align program, Jiang, then based in Beijing, worked remotely as a senior product manager for Cummins, an automotive equipment company headquartered in Columbus, Indiana. Having completed his bachelor’s and master’s in mechanical engineering in China, Jiang was ready to pivot.
“I decided to turn to the computer science field,” he said. “I found that I have an interest in how to debug, in how to do root-cause analysis. So if I want to do it deeper, it’s better to have a good learning base.”
While Jiang pursued an additional master’s degree at Northeastern, Pei Pei was building a bakery business across continents.
The pair met playing math table games at a friend’s gathering, where, according to Jiang, she made the first move. Years later, the partnership they built together would extend into entrepreneurship as they worked to bring the bakery brand — which Pei Pei had spent a decade building in China — to the US.
From Boston, Jiang helped research neighborhoods, studied customer demand, and managed the business side of the operation as the couple worked to grow their brand, Peipei’s. Their signature mochi donuts — rings of chewy, connected dough balls linked together like a strand of beads — come coated in flavors like black sesame, taro coconut, matcha, and strawberry milk.
“I went to many bakeries around Boston — Asian pastries, French pastries, different places,” Jiang said. “I was doing some comparison on how we could succeed here, what kind of product we could offer, and what kind of community we could target.”
The two settled on a bakery in Waltham and opened the storefront last April. As part of their bakery business, they concentrated on catering, particularly within the education sphere, and have established partnerships with Brandeis and Harvard dining services.
“For each catering, if I sell 100 donuts, 100 people will know me, so that’s kind of 100 times the impact,” Jiang said. “We found that if our product is good already, all we need to do is make people know us. Catering is the fastest way for people to learn about us.”
A year passed in Boston before Jiang’s wife and son were able to join him. In 2025, he secured an internship at Amazon in Seattle, where he worked on a machine learning project with Amazon Web Services and once again found himself separated from his family. Being apart from family and the uncertainty about what lay ahead had its difficulties.
“The most challenging part is that you will fail most of the time,” Jiang said. “You don’t know whether your efforts will pay back.”
Living on his own, Jiang again focused on forming community.
“In our spare time, we played badminton with our team members and our managers,” he said. “I think this kind of team building helped us earn more trust.”
After completing his internship and returning to Northeastern, Jiang focused on completing his master’s program.
“I needed to put all my efforts into studying computer science,” he said. “Priority management is very important. Managing everything step by step helped me stay focused, and the support I received during my job search meant I could quickly learn about new opportunities and industry trends.”
To get through the program, Jiang spearheaded a weekly study group of eight students. The group checked in with each other, conducted mock interviews, shared advice, and celebrated each other’s successes. When others received offers, Jiang considered their achievements his own accomplishments.
“I built our study team,” said Jiang, who was also a member of the Northeastern Robotics Club. “We share resources, we encourage each other, we test each other. We are not only a team; we are bonded friends forever. I think it’s one thing that’s very important and that’s the guideline for me. You need to build the success of others.”
In the coming months, Jiang and his wife will relocate back to Seattle, where Jiang has a full-time offer from Amazon. They are planning on establishing another branch of Peipei’s there, in addition to their Waltham location.
As they prepare for their next chapter in Seattle, Jiang said his guiding values remain unchanged. Across classrooms, workplaces, and bakery counters, the experiences that mattered most to him were the ones that left him uplift others.
“In China we have a saying,” he said. “If you give a flower to someone, you will smell it as well.”
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