# Kurt Kotzur

> Software Engineer at Airbnb

Location: San Francisco Bay Area, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/kurtkotzur

## Work Experience
### Software Engineer, Pricing Guidance Serving @ Airbnb
Jan 2026 – Present
Building a reliable, high-quality ML serving and data platform that creates accurate and transparent pricing guidance and features. Enabling rapid model deployment and experimentation across Airbnb.

### Software Engineer, Pricing and Availability Platform @ Airbnb
Jan 2021 – Jan 2026 | San Francisco, California
Backend engineering on the Pricing and Availability Platform team.

• Rearchitecture: Completed a multi-year overhaul of Pricing & Availability, scaling to 100K+ QPS and improving scalability/reliability via Lambda architecture, read-optimized storage, and precomputed views.
• Partner APIs: Defined external API strategy (e.g., Trivago), introducing simplified batch APIs and isolated environments to reduce latency and protect core systems.
• Distributed locking: Built a real-time distributed locking system for checkout, preventing double bookings with 99.99% availability.
• Optimization: Improved pricing library indexing performance through selective statefulness, reducing infrastructure costs.

### Software Engineer, Trust @ Airbnb
Jan 2019 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco, California, United States
Backend and Android engineering on the Identity team of the Trust organization.

### Senior Software Engineer @ Gusto
Jan 2015 – Jan 2019 | San Francisco, California
Backend and web frontend engineering in the Benefits team, owning company and employee health benefit management apps.
• Built an end-to-end recommendation system to assist new business clients with selecting health plans to offer, spanning a backend recommendation engine and a frontend comparison and enrollment flow.
Standardized state management throughout our React frontend application by migrating from an ad hoc paradigm to Redux.

Infrastructure engineering in the Developer Experience team, owning continuous integration, backend application libraries, and database tooling.
• Modernized our Javascript test suite by integrating it with Jest. This improved frontend developer efficiency through newly available features such as watch mode and concise snapshot testing.
Developed Migrant, a Go application enabling online (no-downtime) MySQL schema changes via binlog monitoring.

### Software Engineer @ OneLogin
Jan 2015 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco, California

### Software Engineer @ Moboom
Jan 2014 – Jan 2015 | San Francisco, California

### Teacher's Assistant @ Rice University: Department of Chemical Engineering
Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Houston, TX
• Worked with other teacher's assistants to plan tutorial sessions, develop answer keys, and grade assignments and exams.
• Guided students on critical thinking and good engineering practice; advised professor with regard to student weaknesses.

### Chemical Engineering Intern @ Smith & Burgess
Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Houston, TX
• Analyzed subsystems in chemical and gas plants to identify overpressure scenarios.
• Synthesized equipment and process specification to design preventative and ameliorative relief systems.

### Tutor @ TestMasters
Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Houston, TX
• Provided individual and group instruction for SAT and AP preparation in Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, and English.
• Evaluated student performance and revised curricula accordingly.

### Undergraduate Research Assistant @ Rice University: Soft Matter Laboratory
Jan 2012 – Jan 2013 | Houston, TX
• Examined formation conditions of colloidal microstructures using applied magnetic fields.
• Designed methods to induce gelation of polymeric bead chain suspensions to form liquid crystals.

### Spanish-English Interpreter @ Asociación Obras Sociales del Santo Hermano Pedro
Jan 2011 – Jan 2011 | Antigua, Guatemala
• Interpreted for visiting American doctors and instructed on key Spanish vocabulary.
• Assessed deficiencies in documents and signage and arranged appropriate translations.


## Education
### Bachelor of Science (BS) in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Rice University


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

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Source: https://flows.cv/kurtkotzur
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/kurtkotzur/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-01