Open to opportunities

Arthur Hong

@arthurhong

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Staff full-stack engineer building search, booking, and personalization with data-driven impact.

United States

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What I'm looking for

I’m looking for a team where I can own end-to-end product engineering—shipping search/checkout and experimentation-driven improvements with strong backend reliability, rapid iteration, and data-driven decisions (including pragmatic AI when it adds real value).

I’m a full-stack engineer with 12+ years building customer-facing products across media, hospitality, and tech platforms. I thrive on turning ambiguous requirements into shipped features with measurable user impact, from discovery to conversion.

As a Staff Software Engineer at Airbnb, I’ve owned service discovery and checkout flows for marketplace expansion, partnering backend, frontend, and data signals to improve search and booking outcomes. I’ve shipped relevance improvements through custom Elasticsearch scoring and A/B testing, delivered faster journeys with React/Next.js SSR and React Query, and increased average order value via checkout logic and Stripe-driven booking add-ons.

I focus on end-to-end ownership and reliability: I implemented real-time availability to prevent overbookings using transactional PostgreSQL patterns, Redis cache invalidation, and WebSocket live updates—while keeping sub-second responses at high request rates. I also built experimentation tooling and dashboards at Meta to help teams run faster, higher-quality A/B tests, including automated analysis and guardrail checks.

Earlier, at Reserve and Forbes, I built reservation systems and editorial platforms using Ruby on Rails and modern backend architecture, including headless CMS and multi-platform distribution. I bring pragmatic AI integration experience, strong experimentation design, and performance-first engineering practices that help teams iterate rapidly and make data-driven product decisions.

Experience

Work history, roles, and key accomplishments

Current

Staff Software Engineer

Current

Airbnb

Jun 2022 - Present (4 years 1 month)

Owned service discovery and checkout flows for marketplace expansion, shipping search and booking improvements that drove 5K+ daily service bookings and 35% conversion in the first quarter. Built the search backend and real-time availability/checkout systems using Node.js, React, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Redis, and WebSockets.

Node React TypeScript Next.js PostgreSQL Elasticsearch Redis React Query WebSockets Microservices Stripe API A B Testing Search Relevance SELECT FOR UPDATE

Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer

Reserve

Jun 2017 - May 2019 (1 year 11 months)

Built a restaurant reservation management system for high-end dining using Ruby on Rails, React, PostgreSQL, and Twilio, supporting 200+ restaurants and 15K+ monthly reservations. Implemented dynamic table inventory with locking to prevent double-bookings and shipped guest preference/CRM features.

Ruby on Rails React PostgreSQL Redis Optimistic Concurrency Control Ruby CRM

Software Architect

Forbes

Jun 2015 - Jun 2017 (2 years)

Rebuilt an editorial content management system, migrating 500K+ articles and reducing article publish time from 15 minutes to under 2 minutes. Designed a headless CMS architecture for multi-platform distribution with PHP microservices, REST APIs, Redis caching, and CDN integration.

PHP MySQL Elasticsearch React Headless CMS Microservices REST APIs Redis CDN CMS migration Uptime Optimization

Software Engineer

The New York Times

Jul 2013 - Jun 2015 (1 year 11 months)

Built an article recommendation engine for homepage personalization using Python and collaborative filtering with A/B testing, increasing average session time by 18% and pageviews per visit by 25%. Implemented a real-time breaking news notification system using Node.js, WebSocket, Redis pub/sub, and push notification APIs for 2M+ subscribers.

Python Collaborative Filtering A B Testing MongoDB Node WebSockets Redis Pub Sub Push Notifications Recommendation Systems

Education

Degrees, certifications, and relevant coursework

Carnegie Mellon University

Master’s Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human-Computer Interaction

2009 - 2013

Activities and societies: Coursework and projects across HCI, programming and full-stack development (Python, React/TypeScript, Node.js), databases, A/B testing/statistical analysis, and data/ML topics including embeddings.

Earned a Master's degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University (2009–2013).