# Brandon Soong

> Full-stack engineer & Leader building products, platforms, and AI systems.

Brandon Soong is a full-stack engineer. Full-stack engineer & Leader building products, platforms, and AI systems. Based in Brooklyn, NY. I work across the stack, making everything that I work on better than before. Hi! Thanks for coming to my website. I grew up on Long Island, New York, where a lot of my early life revolved around sports, community work, and volunteering. I played three sports growing up, but lacrosse was the big one. I played defense year-round, mixed in a lot of basketball, and even had a brief wrestling stint. Sports probably shaped more of my personality than I realized at the time. I’ve always been competitive, but they gave me an outlet for it and taught me how much I enjoy getting better at something, working with a team, and figuring out how to win. Around the same time, I got basically unrestricted access to the family computer at about 10 years old, which was probably a questionable parenting decision but worked out pretty well for me. I got into video games first, then computers more broadly, and eventually became fascinated by what technology could actually let you build. That interest eventually led me to computer science, although not in the most convincing way at first. I got a 2 on the AP Computer Science exam in high school and then decided that naturally the next step was to major in Computer Science at Stevens Institute of Technology. Stevens was where things really clicked. I made some of my closest friends there, met people who changed the direction of my career, and got my first real taste of building software from scratch. I worked on projects like Drunkful, HudsonHapps, and Forkist, and realized pretty quickly that I loved the process of taking an idea, building something scrappy, putting it in front of people, and figuring out what worked. I kept doing contract work and internships throughout college, and after graduating I made one of the best decisions of my life: I got a cat named Moto. I also started my professional career at KarmaCheck, a Series A startup. It was my first experience seeing what a fast-moving startup looked like with real funding, customers, and expectations behind it. After a few months, I realized I wanted a little more structure around me, which eventually brought me to Twitter. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter. So, as one does, I ended up at Priceline. Priceline became a really important part of my career. I had great managers and mentors who pushed me, trusted me with increasingly difficult problems, and helped me become a much stronger engineer. I learned how larger engineering organizations operate, how to build systems that have to last, and how to think beyond simply getting something to work. But the startup itch never really went away. I missed building things from zero. I missed moving quickly, wearing too many hats, and being close enough to a problem that I could directly influence what got built and why. I started working on Hudson Happs again outside of work, and eventually decided to leave Priceline for Default, an early-stage startup. I definitely got what I asked for. Default was intense. There was an enormous amount of work, pressure, ambiguity, and responsibility packed into a relatively short period of time. I got to work across product, infrastructure, architecture, AI, and a lot of the messy areas in between. It was one of the most demanding experiences of my career, but also one of the ones I learned the most from. It taught me a lot about startups, engineering, leadership, and probably most importantly, the kind of environment I do my best work in. After Default, I took some time off, reset a bit, and thought seriously about what I wanted the next chapter of my career to look like. That chapter is now starting at Posh. If there’s a common thread through everything so far, it’s that I like building. I like taking unclear problems and turning them into something real. I like moving quickly, working with ambitious people, learning things I probably have no business knowing yet, and getting a little better every time around. There’s also a bigger goal behind a lot of this for me: I don’t want to spend my entire life climbing someone else’s ladder. I’m grateful for the companies I’ve worked at and the people I’ve learned from, but I’ve always wanted to eventually build enough ownership, freedom, and financial independence that I can step outside of the traditional rat race entirely. I don’t know exactly what that looks like yet. Maybe it’s a company of my own, maybe it’s a collection of smaller businesses and projects, or maybe it becomes something I haven’t thought of yet. But a lot of what I’m doing now, professionally and personally, is about getting closer to that point. Outside of work, I’m usually building something, playing basketball, exploring New York, hanging out with Moto, or thinking about some new idea that may or may not turn into anything. Hopefully one of them gets me out of the rat race. Contact Brandon Soong at bsoong99@gmail.com or via the contact page at https://bsoong.com/contact. Canonical site: https://bsoong.com. Person entity: https://bsoong.com/#brandon-soong. Also known as Bsoong. Resume: https://bsoong.com/resume. About: https://bsoong.com/about. Work: https://bsoong.com/experience. Writing: https://bsoong.com/writing.

## Experience

- [Tech Lead at Default](https://bsoong.com/experience/default) (Oct 2025 – Jul 2026)
- [Senior Software Engineer at Priceline](https://bsoong.com/experience/priceline) (Jul 2022 – Oct 2025)
- [Software Engineer at Twitter](https://bsoong.com/experience/twitter) (Apr 2022 – Jun 2022)
- [Full-Stack Engineer at KarmaCheck](https://bsoong.com/experience/karmacheck) (May 2021 – Mar 2022)
- [Database Engineer at Lazard Asset Management](https://bsoong.com/experience/lazard-asset-management) (May 2020 – May 2021)
- [Club Mentor at Google Developer Club (DSC)](https://bsoong.com/experience/google-developer-club-dsc) (Sep 2020 – May 2021)
- [Information Security Contractor at Tapestry](https://bsoong.com/experience/tapestry) (May 2019 – May 2020)

## Projects

- [HudsonHapps](https://bsoong.com/experience/hudsonhapps): A local discovery platform I founded and built for finding happy hours, restaurant specials, and local deals across Hudson County. Grew to 2,500+ monthly users and 15,000 pageviews.
- [Drunkful](https://bsoong.com/experience/drunkful): A mobile app I designed, built, launched, and marketed independently, featuring drinking games, drink tracking, randomizers, and local bar specials. Reached 1,800 downloads and 10,000+ launch impressions across iOS and Android.
- [Forkist](https://bsoong.com/experience/forkist): A seed-stage social food discovery startup built around restaurant reviews, recommendations, and the social graph. I worked across the product stack, from mobile UI and backend services to notifications and social features.
- [Google Developer Club](https://bsoong.com/experience/google-developer-club): A Google-sponsored Developer Student Club focused on helping the surrounding community through technology. I mentored members and built a communal site for Hoboken small businesses.

## Writing

- [Why I Rebuilt bsoong.com as a CMS](https://bsoong.com/writing/why-i-rebuilt-bsoong-com-as-a-cms): I want to be the most famous Brandon Soong on the internet. So I rebuilt my static portfolio as a CMS and turned myself into the test case.

## Next

- [About](https://bsoong.com/about.md)
- [Contact](https://bsoong.com/contact.md)
- [Resume](https://bsoong.com/resume.md)
- [llms.txt](https://bsoong.com/llms.txt)