Houman Haji

ML Engineer & Software Engineer | Ranking, Recommendation, Production ML & Data Systems

Education

University of Southern California

Master of Science - MS, Computer Science / December, 2018

University of Toronto

Bachelor of Engineering - BE, Computer Engineering / December, 2016

Experience

Snappfood

Data Scientist / September, 2024 — September, 2025

• Worked on production ML systems for restaurant ad ranking, recommendation, and marketplace optimization. Built and evaluated XGBoost-based predictive ranking models using Python, SQL, and Spark-based feature pipelines to improve ad revenue, CTR, and conversion. • Delivered Airflow-scheduled training, scoring, and evaluation workflows, including offline validation, A/B testing, regression analysis, and production impact monitoring. • Improved revenue per impression by 3%, ad CTR by 15%, and order conversion by 25%, while supporting high-volume marketplace traffic. • Optimized a FastAPI ETA prediction service, reducing average latency from 60ms to 10ms and increasing throughput from 120 requests/sec to approximately 400 requests/sec.

Shift Technology

Data Solution Engineer / October, 2021 — January, 2023

• Built and maintained data integration pipelines connecting insurance partners with AI-powered fraud detection systems. • Developed backend services and APIs in C#/.NET for processing large-scale insurance data. • Implemented monitoring solutions using OpenTelemetry and Grafana, enhancing reliability across 1,000+ daily jobs.

Research Center of Informatics Industries

Security Engineer / September, 2018 — May, 2020

Information Sciences Institute

Security Researcher / May, 2017 — July, 2017

Meezam.com

Software Engineer / January, 2023 — Present

• Building Meezam.com, a restaurant reservation platform for online bookings, restaurant availability, host operations, and reservation management. • Designed and implemented backend systems using Node.js, PostgreSQL, Docker, and containerized services. Built reservation workflows, role-based access control, payment integration, cancellation policies, host dashboard APIs, observability, and production deployment infrastructure. • Managed product delivery by defining requirements, coordinating frontend development, prioritizing releases, leading restaurant onboarding, and working directly with restaurant users to improve product workflows.

George Brown Polytechnic

Professor, Advanced Object-Oriented Programming / September, 2023 — December, 2023

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