Alex Kibeom HongAlex Kibeom Hong

I’m a front-end engineer and design engineer who likes turning complex ideas into clear, useful products. That might mean building an interface, creating a reusable component or design system, prototyping a new workflow, developing a product, or even turning an idea for a spill-proof coffee lid into a patented invention.

Professionally, I’ve spent the past nine years building and modernizing applications for the U.S. Census Bureau. My work has grown from hands-on front-end development and interface design into leading front-end architecture, building shared component libraries and design systems, prototyping new experiences, and helping teams translate complex requirements, workflows, and services into production software.

Over the past several years, I’ve also taken on more technical leadership, shaping implementation approaches, establishing reusable patterns and standards, and mentoring engineers through design and development challenges.

Outside of work, I build products and developer tools of my own. What I enjoy most is taking something abstract, understanding how it should work, and turning it into something thoughtful, useful, and real.

Here are some of the core skills I use across my work.

Design

  • End-to-end product thinking — from problem framing to polished, shippable UI.
  • Design Thinking
  • Built and evolved a shared component system supporting 10+ Census applications.
  • Interaction Design
  • Functional Prototyping
  • Due to software restrictions in the government environment, I adapted PowerPoint into a high-fidelity design and prototyping tool, creating detailed interface concepts and interaction flows before implementation.
  • Daily design tool for specs, prototypes, and design-system source of truth.
  • Wireframing
  • Visual Design
  • Digital Illustration
  • Procreate

Engineering

  • Primary framework used across years of production Census applications.
  • Vuetify
  • Nuxt
  • Default language for building maintainable, type-safe front ends.
  • JavaScript
  • HTML/CSS/SCSS
  • Comfortable building in React; used on side projects and prototypes.
  • React Native
  • Angular
  • Tailwind
  • Python
  • Component Architecture
  • AI-Assisted Development

Building / Delivery

  • GitHub
  • API Integration
  • Authentication / RBAC
  • Supabase
  • PostgreSQL
  • Stripe
  • Resend
  • Cypress, Playwright, Selenium, Jest
  • Storybook
  • WCAG-minded from the start — semantics, keyboard flows, and screen-reader support.
  • Jenkins
  • Sonatype/Nexus IQ
  • CI/CD
  • Netlify

Leadership

  • Technical Leadership
  • Team Management
  • Project Planning
  • Design Critique
  • Mentoring
  • Stakeholder Demos

Things I’ve built and designed.

U.S. Census Bureau

Enterprise applications & design systems

For the past nine years, I’ve designed and built enterprise applications supporting a range of U.S. Census Bureau operations. My work has included application interfaces, features, reusable components, and a shared design system adopted across 10+ production applications. Over time, my role grew into leading front-end development, design-system architecture, and implementation standards across teams. Working closely with product owners, business analysts, QA, and engineers, I translated complex operational requirements into accessible, scalable experiences.

Due to the sensitive nature of this work, production applications and complex application screens are not shown publicly. Instead, the examples here focus on supporting tools and systems I built around the application ecosystem, including the design system and application builder, with only limited, non-sensitive functionality shown. I’m happy to walk through the broader work, design decisions, and technical challenges in conversation.

Role
Product Design · Design Engineering · Front-End Lead · Design Systems
Tools
Nuxt · Vue · Vuetify · Angular · TypeScript · JavaScript · Cypress · Jest · SASS · PowerPoint Wireframing · MSW · Jenkins · Nexus IQ

C3 AI — Department of Justice

AI-powered enterprise application

Designed the mobile UX, functional prototypes, and production-ready interfaces for a C3 AI-powered Department of Justice iOS application supporting investigative workflows. Translated complex workflows into intuitive mobile experiences, validated interactions through prototyping and testing, and implemented navigation, interaction patterns, and touch-optimized interfaces in React Native.

Role
UX/UI Design · Design Engineering · Functional Prototyping
Tools
React Native · TypeScript · JavaScript · CSS/SCSS · PowerPoint Wireframing

Hands2Hands

Home services marketplace

Founded, designed, and independently built a two-sided marketplace connecting homeowners with local contractors. I took the product from concept to production, creating the complete user experience and application, including role-based onboarding, authentication, contractor workflows, messaging, notifications, payments, and deployment, while using AI-assisted development for implementation, debugging, and code review.

Hands2Hands is live and serves homeowners and contractors across Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. Explore the product at hands2hands.com.

Visit hands2hands.com ↗
Role
Founder · Product Design · Full-Stack Development
Tools
Nuxt · Vue · Supabase · PostgreSQL · Stripe · Resend · TypeScript · Tailwind · Netlify · AI-Assisted Development

UiPool

Design system analytics platform

Designed and built UiPool, a developer tool for design-system analytics that helps teams define patterns, map them to components, and measure adoption and drift across a codebase. I created the accompanying npm package and CLI so developers can scan repositories and generate reports on usage, coverage, health, and deprecations.

Visit uipool.com ↗ NPM package ↗
Role
Product Design · Full-Stack Development
Tools
Nuxt · Vue · TypeScript · npm · Tailwind · Supabase · Netlify · AI-Assisted Development

Slid

Patented Consumer Product Invention - Spill-proof Hot Lid

Created SLID, a patented sliding coffee lid designed to reduce spills. I took the product from initial concept to commercialization through user research, patent research, physical prototyping, vacuum forming, 3D printing, fundraising, team building, and overseas manufacturing.

The product reached commercial production, secured a U.S. utility patent, and generated interest from national coffee brands and regional coffee chains.

Visit slid.io ↗ U.S. Utility Patent ↗
Role
Founder · Inventor · Product Design · Hardware Prototyping
Tools
3D Printing · Vacuum Forming · Product Prototyping · User Research · Patent Research · Manufacturing

OSoMe: the observatory on social media

Large-Scale Social Media Visualization & Research Platform

Designed and developed an interactive geographic visualization tool for Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe), enabling researchers to search and visualize billions of geotagged tweets by hashtag and time period across the United States. I built the querying and visualization experience for large-scale social media datasets, including dynamic heatmaps that revealed geographic patterns during major events and public conversations.

The work became part of OSoMe’s public research platform and contributed to a peer-reviewed publication in PeerJ Computer Science.

Visit OSoMe ↗ PeerJ Computer Science Publication ↗
Role
Research Assistant · Data Visualization Engineer
Tools
Python · D3.js · JavaScript · Google Maps API · User Research · Data Analysis

Let’s connect.

Whether you’d like to discuss product design, design engineering, or a potential opportunity, feel free to reach out.

© 2026 Alex Kibeom Hong.