San Francisco, California, United States
At Zeal, I get to work on some really cool problems at the intersection of AI and hospitality tech, as one of two engineers building and maintaining our restaurant discovery platform.
The most technically interesting project is working on our core restaurant recommendation system (which I helped construct from scratch). Getting this system production-ready means optimizing everything from SQL queries to model context windows—we end up reducing API latency by 67% through careful parallelization and caching strategies.
I also work on a browser automation agent that can handle private dining inquiries at scale. It can simultaneously reach out to dozens of restaurants on behalf of users looking for private room bookings. Pretty satisfying to see a process that used to take hours of manual work happen automatically in minutes.
Beyond the technical work, I get valuable experience collaborating directly with our CEO and technical advisors on product strategy, helping design everything from our supergroup features to completely overhauling our recommendation algorithms. Working at a small startup teaches me how to move fast, wear multiple hats, and always keep the user experience front and center.