Selected Work | William Whatley

Selected work

From ambiguous problem
to working system.

What I built, the decisions behind it,
and what happened next.

01 / Applied AI · Geospatial intelligence

Vale

Founder & Engineer · 2026

Hundreds of millions of geospatial data points ingested

PlanningTerrainHazards

AWS ingestion worker

PostGIS → SiteReportField-level evidence · coverage · confidence

CLI / MCPGrounded answers

System architecture

Making fragmented land data usable by AI.

Built an AI land-intelligence system spanning hundreds of millions of geospatial data points, with agent-operated ingestion on AWS and cited site reports served through PostGIS and MCP.

MCPGrounded generationEvaluation design

296 English authorities ingested
6 MCP tools exposing 34 site-profile fields
62% → 89% rubric pass rate

Internal evaluation: 100 cases across 25 authorities.

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02 / Venture building · Energy infrastructure

Metris Energy

Co-founder & CTO / CPO · 2023–2025

Tens of thousands of devices · millions of telemetry records

OEMs & devices5-min telemetry

Normalized energy dataBilling · performance · fault detection

System architecture

Building an energy startup from zero to market.

Co-founded a venture-backed energy startup, owning product strategy, engineering, hiring and technical sales. Took the platform from MVP to market and early signs of product–market fit, connecting tens of thousands of devices and ingesting millions of telemetry records.

Company buildingProduct strategyTechnical sales

Co-founder & CTO / CPO · secondary share sale

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03 / Embedded delivery · Data architecture

Berrien Springs Public Schools

Fractional CTO · 2025

SIS + 2 LMSsCurriculumState data

One source of truthStudent · learning · reporting data

Admin workflowsPerformance benchmarks

System architecture

Turning fragmented student data into useful decisions.

Replaced dozens of linked Google Sheets with a unified data architecture connecting student information, two learning management systems, curriculum and state reporting. As sole engineer and fractional CTO, built bespoke administrative tools and student-performance benchmarks across district schools and state data.

Systems integrationData architectureCustomer delivery

SIS, two LMSs, curriculum and state reporting integrated
Dozens of linked Google Sheets replaced
Student-performance benchmarking across district and state

Delivered for a district with $100M in annual funding.

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04 / Embodied AI · Robotics

Spice Terminator

Team project · LeRobot Worldwide Hackathon · 2025

24-hour build · top 30 global winner

Teleoperated demonstrations

GR00T N1.5 / SmolVLAFine-tuned for plate cleaning

SO-101 armDepth + RGB cameras

Web controlSynced 3D view

Training and control workflow

Teaching a robot to clean a plate.

In 24 hours, our team built an autonomous cleaning pipeline using an SO-101 arm, RealSense depth camera and RGB camera. We fine-tuned NVIDIA GR00T N1.5 and Hugging Face SmolVLA, and built a web platform connecting robot control, live camera feeds and a synchronized 3D view.

Vision-language-action modelsRobot control3D visualization

Top 30 globally · 3,000+ participants across 44 countries
Best Novelty Prize · London hackathon hosted by SoTA
Recognized by NVIDIA Robotics

Hugging Face LeRobot Worldwide Hackathon · June 2025.

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Athena Alliance

Athena is a SaaS-based executive community that makes it easy and accessible for women leaders to learn from their peers. As the first Executive-Education-as-a-Service platform, Athena delivers live and on-demand learning, coaching, networking, and access to career opportunities for the world’s top women leaders.

Development

Product Management

Lambda Function

Lambda Function is an Intelligent Control System (ICS) that uses Artificial Intelligence to automate and optimize CNC machining processes. By leveraging machine learning, it recommends optimal machining strategies, monitors tool life in real-time, and provides actionable insights for continuous improvement. Lambda Function helps manufacturers increase machine uptime, reduce waste, improve productivity, and lower machining costs, driving significant ROI for precision component manufacturers.

CTO

Product Management

LifeOS MCP Runtime

Like many people lately, I’ve been juggling a flood of ideas, priorities, and data across different parts of life. Finance, health, productivity siloed in closed systems. What I wanted was a way to cut through the noise, reason holistically, and take smarter action across the board. So I built Life OS: a local personal assistant AI (or a model context protocol (MCP) runtime) with real-time data, persistent memory, and Claude-powered reasoning. Think of it as a command center for managing both the day-to-day and the big picture. I've been developing organizational systems for a decade; 10 years of near-daily writing has resulted in 4,500+ pages across 55+ volumes. I've intricately catalogued my life in all aspects including finance, travels, mental and physical health, personal, and professional endeavors. Many of the design principles come directly from my pen-and-paper journaling system. Life OS is an attempt to bring that same fidelity, structure, and introspection into software.

Design

Development

Prompt Engineering

From ambiguous problem
to working system.