Yuhong is part of the muscle that helps to power the WaterSmart platform. Yuhong joined WaterSmart as a Senior Software Engineer back in September 2018. She has been an integral addition to the team due to her expertise in bringing maturity to products to assist in scaling them to the next level. As the WaterSmart ecosystem has grown to over 150 utility partners, this has been particularly valuable for the team.


Coming from a background in big data and enterprise software, Yuhong is keenly aware of the myriad of challenges a company has to overcome in order to grow into its most impactful and influential phase. Her work at WaterSmart has spanned many areas of the platform, and recently, has taken specific focus on navigating the previously uncharted territory of payment integrations. Yuhong has spearheaded a variety of integrations with leading vendors in the industry, helping bring about a unified customer experience to a utility’s end-customers. “Distributing accurate bills and collecting payments from customers is at the core of each utility’s operations. Our work to provide an improved payment experience is incredibly rewarding, particularly when I hear that our efforts help utilities to have greater revenue assurance,” remarks Yuhong.

Yuhong has spent a good amount of time considering the impacts of COVID-19 on utilities and their ability to collect payments in light of non-essential utility staff being told to stay home and many utility offices being closed to the public. “I’m not sure that anyone could have predicted the impacts of this current pandemic, however our forward-thinking utility partners have much less to worry about due to minimum disruption to cash collections.”  Maintaining simple digital payment options is critical at this time and Yuhong’s work to support both one-time and recurring payments through auto-pay has been invaluable for the WaterSmart utility partners taking advantage.

While recently Yuhong has spent the majority of her time working on payment integrations, she has taken great joy in playing a small role in the digital revolution occurring in the water industry. “I joined the WaterSmart team because I saw a wonderful opportunity to take part in the modernization and maturation of the water industry,” shares Yuhong. A big fan of data-analytics herself, Yuhong was incredibly interested in developing a more interactive and responsive data-driven platform for water utilities and their customers. “In all honesty, I never thought much of my water utility before. Throughout my time at WaterSmart I have come to realize there is so much more to water consumption than just the dollar amount on a bill. I love seeing how we surface actionable insights from utility data to make it so much more palatable for everyone, even me!”

But Yuhong doesn’t spend all of her time writing, editing, and deploying code to the WaterSmart Platform. When she finds some spare time, she can be found nerding out about watersheds in pursuit of fly fishing. In fact, her love for fishing has taken her on many vacations to the less-traveled parts of the United States. Yuhong also takes great pride in mentoring those who are starting out on their engineering journeys. She hopes to continue to support those her junior and do what she can to continually bring greater diversity to the world of software engineering.

Favorite activity in quarantine?

“Experimenting with the limits of food safety and seeing just how far I can stretch my groceries before having to go for another trip to the store.”

Best watersmart memory?

“All of our day-long engineering Hackathons! It is so great to get out of the office for a day, be given a major challenge, and work diligently to develop a thoughtful solution.”

Favorite fishing spot?

“My favorite spot to return to is the Sierra Nevada backcountry!”

Want to learn more about WaterSmart’s payment integrations?

Request a demo today!