Andrew Wilson’s Home Page
Welcome to my personal homepage! My name is Andrew Wilson. I work with computers. This site is about me and my work. It is also, frankly, a mess.
Things I’m working on:
Under constructionThis page is a work in progress. Please help me fix it.
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Last updated: 10/11/1999 · You are visitor number
Your org is running on 1999.
Three systems are failing: the AI pipeline, the team, and the Friday 5pm deploy.
I’m Andrew Wilson, and I build engineering teams that ship with AI. These are exactly the problems I fix, and they sit at the CTO, VP and SVP table.
Every fix you make upgrades this website. Ready?
Cancel is not an option. (Fine: here’s my CV.)
Level 1 of 3
Ship the AI pipeline
The AI demo works. The prices it quotes do not. Legal is nervous, and nobody can say why the model said what it said.
Choose your fix:
✓ Truth layer installed
The model never does the math.
The model reads, routes and explains. A deterministic truth layer owns every number, so every price can be traced.
Real world:
- Designed an AI quoting platform for a manufacturer: the model reads the request, a deterministic truth layer prices every line.
- The engineer who took over its maintenance estimated I wrote 80 to 90% of the quote engine.
- Found that every query waited on a single database connection, and moved the service to a shared pool.
- The pattern became my studio’s reference architecture for AI products.
Level 2 of 3
Build a better software team
Everyone owns everything, so nobody owns anything. PRs wait six days. The 1:1s are status meetings in disguise.
Choose your fix:
✓ Ownership map published
Write the ownership map. Stuck two days? Escalate.
Clear owners, written handoffs, and 1:1s that are about the person, not the tracker.
Real world:
- Led teams of up to 17 engineers. Today I lead a team of four Principal engineers.
- Aligned 90+ engineers on shared practices, and help lead education across the company.
- Started our first hackathon, which got about 200 people thinking about how to turn internal work into revenue.
- Ran our Brown Bag talks for three years, then handed them to a successor I coached.
- ???Who owns auth?Auth → Platform team
- 6 daysPR waiting on reviewReviewed in a day
- FINAL_v7Spreadsheet of truthOne source of truth
- DMQuick question…Written handoff
- 1:1Status meeting againAbout the person
Level 3 of 3
Stop the Friday 5pm deploys
Hotfix number four this week. Tests are flaky, so people rerun them until they pass. Every deploy is a small act of courage.
Choose your fix:
✓ Gates installed
Gates before ship.
CI checks every push, tests enforce the contracts between teams, and “done” means verified in production.
Real world:
- Ran a team of four AI agents like an engineering org: owned code, written handoffs, CI gates on every push to production.
- Every failure on that team became a written rule. The last one: verify outcomes, not actions.
- Earlier: led a team of five through six requirement changes and shipped a HIPAA-compliant app in three months.
Case file 03: the agent team →Case file 02: four apps, one source of truth →
- Types
- Tests
- Contracts
- Verified live
Org upgraded.
That’s the whole job. I’m Andrew Wilson, and I build engineering teams that ship with AI. The problems I take on sit at the CTO, VP and SVP table: AI that ships, teams that own their work, and Fridays that are boring.
Picture: a floating clay island where the AI pipeline, the team table and the rocket all work now, and me giving a thumbs-up. Each one links to its case file.
Andrew Wilson
Class: Team Builder · Title: Director of Engineering · Level 15 (years in software) · New York City
Stats
- Years shipping software
- 15
- Engineers aligned
- 90+
- Largest team led
- 17
- Principal engineers led today
- 4
Current quest
2022 – now
Director of Engineering Umbrage
Leading senior and principal engineers across client programs.
Designed an AI quoting platform for a manufacturer that ties together its ERP, CRM and pricing warehouse, built to cut quote turnaround from days to hours for 60+ sales reps.
Loot: case files
Achievements
Webby Honoree, 2016
HIPAA app shipped in three months
Brown Bag talks, three years
Writing Dreamknot, a novel
Athens Marathon
Spartan World Championship
Learning Greek
Still running on 1999 somewhere?
I take on select freelance and advisory projects through my lab, Xallindrome. Or just say hi.
