# Chong Yao

> Software Engineer

Location: Austin, Texas, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/chong

Senior software engineer with 8+ years of experience across ads, growth, NFT/crypto infra, and full-stack product development. Passionate about building at the intersection of AI, Web3, healthcare, Fintech and products.

Email
chongyao.robin@gmail.com

Portfolio:
https://www.notion.so/Chong-Yao-Portfolio-2045647d2c18807ebfeeda6cd16c4a15

Blogs:
https://medium.com/@chongyao.robin

Substack
https://zephyrrobin.substack.com

## Work Experience
### Senior Software Engineer @ MakersPlace
Jan 2022 – Jan 2025
- Led the redevelopment of the blockchain smart contract event indexer using Python, Redis, and
Celery, improving end-to-end transaction success rate from 40% to 95%.
- Developed and deployed Ethereum smart contracts for Global Bid using Solidity, with integrated
payment methods via Stripe and Alchemy APIs, generating $100K+ revenue in the first quarter.
- Designed and built the Private Sale and Mint on Demand products using Django and GraphQL,
delivering $64K revenue in the first quarter.
- Engineered robust contract and token importing systems supporting ERC-721 and ERC-7160.
- Collaborated with ML engineers to develop enhanced search functionality using gRPC services and
OpenSearch.
- Implemented data-driven development practices through Statsig A/B testing framework integration
serving 100+ experiments.

### Senior Software Engineer - Ads @ Pinterest
Jan 2019 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco, California, United States
- In Ads Team - SMB (Small and Medium-size Business) / Guidance
- Built the advertisers recommendation systems and Salesforce - Integration with XFN teams
- Implemented Lil's Ads Manager on React Native
- Promoted to Senior Software Engineer

### Software Engineer - Growth @ Pinterest
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco, California, United States
- In Growth Team - User State Machine/Unauth/SEO
- Implemented various types of web landing pages and SEO. 
- Designed, implemented and data analyzed A/B testing experiments across Desktop/mobile web/PWA/AMP.

### Software Engineer @ Poshprofiles
Jan 2015 – Jan 2017 | Livermore, California, United States
- https://www.poshprofiles.com/ (used name Yapjoy) is a online platform for connecting the wedding professionals and brides/grooms with over 1000 bride/grooms and over 6500 wedding professionals.
- Designed and developed the subsystems including bidding, subscription/payment system, user-guidance questionnaire, image drag/drop uploading, Yelp API integration, Facebook/Google/Instagram login and recommendation systems in full-stack for the website and iOS App

### Tech lead @ OH!YA, INC
Jan 2016 – Jan 2017 | Sunnyvale, California, United States
oh!ya (Deprecated/Closed at 2018), iOS Apps and website https://www.ohya.global/, is a marketplace for anyone to share or sell his/her homemade food to the nearby.Two Apps each serves for the cook side and the customer side respectively.
Demo-workflow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKyG7Qy5_PE
Foodie iOS App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oh!ya-guest/id1141022971 (deprecated)
Cook iOS App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/oh!ya-partner/id1141021340 (deprecated)

Led a five-engineers team and published 2 Apps from scratch within 5 months.
Designed and developed the use cases, data model, product structure and backend servier.
Led the development of iOS Apps.

Retrospective and Reviews:
https://chongyaorobin.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/review-of-ohya-inc-part-1-positioning/
https://chongyaorobin.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/review-of-ohya-inc-part-2-product-design/
https://chongyaorobin.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/review-of-ohya-inc-part-3-ios/
https://chongyaorobin.wordpress.com/2017/08/28/replay-review-of-ohya-inc-part-4/
https://chongyaorobin.wordpress.com/2017/08/25/review-of-ohya-inc-part-v-summary/

### ASIC Verification Consultant @ Magnum Semiconductor
Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | Milpitas, California, United States
Built unit level verification environment in UVM for three IPs and write full chip level tests in C for D7 H.265 (HEVC) Video Baseband processing FPGA Chip. Code system level scripts in Perl and generate test-vectors in Python.

### ASIC Verification Engineer @ Atria Logic Inc.
Jan 2013 – Jan 2015 | Sunnyvale, California, United States
Developed unit level verification environment for CAVLC block for H.264 Encoder design. Applied stimulus and add checkers from vectors generated by x264 reference software.

### ASIC Verification Consultant @ Cisco
Jan 2013 – Jan 2014 | San Jose, California, United States
Completed the verification infrastructure from scratch using System Verilog for the Layer 2 and 3 processing engine of a Router ASIC used in the linecard of the next generation Nexus 7000 platform and build Module level environments in System-Verilog for three IPs.


## Education
### Master’s Degree in VLSI design
University of Southern California

### Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering
Wuhan University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/chongyao

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Source: https://flows.cv/chong
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/chong/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-03-22