Avery Spiel

San Francisco, CA

I'm a seasoned, full-stack software engineer with a 15 years of experience in greenfield product development. Currently I serve and lead a team at Virta Health transforming the way diabetes healthcare is delivered. I specialize in joining early stage startups and growing engineering teams and codebases from the ground up.

Relevant Skills:

Python, Django, Javascript, ReactJs, BackboneJS, MarionetteJS, MySQL, PostgresSQL, HTML, CSS, SASS, Git/Github, AWS, Heroku, Matlab, Wireframes, Leading Design Sprints and User Centered Design Activities

Virta Health

Engineering Manager

October 2021 – Present

Senior Software Engineer

September 2019 – October 2021

Minerva Project

Founding Software Engineer

August 2012 – July 2019

Brought four major products from pre-idea to full-scale usage. Lead design sprints and blue-sky exercises before Minerva even knew what should be built. Designed and architected the original proprietary seminar classroom platform on which over 500 students spend 30+ hours per week during the school year. Designed and architected the original proprietary admissions and enrollment process through which 10,000 students apply to Minerva globally and 1-2% are accepted per year.

Worked with three distinct Minerva teams to improve their internal processes, reducing unneeded hours across those teams by 20-40%. These process improvements came from automation, improved software tooling, and an application of lean manufacturing principles to understand and remove bottlenecks.

Helped grow the product team from two to twenty over five years. Helped grow the Minerva team from four to 175.

The Second Glass

Full Stack Web and Mobile Engineer

February 2010 – June 2012

Designed, built and supported a mobile app on both Android and iPhone platforms in 4 week launch cycles. Created and supported a supporting site on a Django web platform with PostgresSQL backend. Acquired 10,000 users who created 50,000 reviews of wines. Had over 6,000 Android and iPhone downloads.

Designed and built in three weeks an in-house ticketing system (selling and collecting) in HTML5 and JQuery on a Django web platform which was used to process 7,000 tickets amounting to $250k in revenue in 2011. This app was still in use with no developer maintenance as of 2015. Ran front of house at 1000+ person events all around the country.

First paid employee of Second Glass. Interviewed and made two hires, filling out the engineering team.

Artaic, Innovative Mosaic

Mechanical Engineer, Roboticist

June 2009 – February 2010

Programmed a ROBOT to manufacture custom mosaic. Yes.

Reduced build time of one square foot of custom, robotically manufactured mosaic from 30 minutes to 12 minutes through modelling, optimizing work flow, and improved components.

Improved the quality of tiles being used to build mosaics, drastically reducing the numbers of chipped and broken tiles entering the system using Cognex vision software.

Manufactured and installed mosaics including a 450 square foot, custom mosaic made from 10mm tiles in over 60 colors.

Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

B.S. Mechanical Engineering

September 2004 – May 2008