Portfolio 2025

    Zack
    Spooner

    Applied AI Engineer

    I build production AI systems — autonomous agents, real-time monitoring, and LLM platforms deployed across enterprise healthcare.

    Brown '25. Currently at K Health in NYC.

    Zack Spooner
    About

    I work on messy, high-stakes problems where systems are fragmented, incentives are misaligned, and the path forward isn't obvious.

    I studied Economics and Data Science at Brown. When I developed a rare health issue that went undiagnosed, I mapped symptoms, analyzed longitudinal data, and used AI-assisted reasoning to uncover the root cause after the healthcare system failed to connect the dots. That experience reshaped how I think about decision-making, incentives, and the real cost of siloed information.

    Since then, I've designed and shipped production internal AI and analytics platforms, led operations and product delivery at an LLM startup, and built a company-wide knowledge system still used by 200+ staff at Fannie Mae. My work sits at the intersection of applied AI, analytics infrastructure, and product thinking—turning ambiguous questions into durable systems that shape real decisions.

    I take ownership end-to-end, move quickly from idea to production, and gravitate toward problems where leverage, judgment, and trust matter.

    Outside of work, I climb, surf, cycle, cook, and spend as much time outdoors as possible with my two dogs.

    Surfing in Costa Rica
    Rock climbing adventure
    Cycling adventure
    Hiking with dogs
    Cooking adventure
    Outdoor activities
    Rock climbing
    Surfing adventure
    Outdoor exploration
    Experience

    Experience

    Production AI systems built end-to-end — from autonomous agents to real-time monitoring platforms — on lean teams where everything ships.

    October 2025 – PresentNew York, NY

    Applied AI Engineer

    K Health

    I build and own production AI systems at K Health — autonomous agents, real-time anomaly detection, and LLM analytics platforms serving enterprise health system partners.

    • Built Hawk-GPT, a production Slack bot serving 6 enterprise health system partners — an autonomous analytics agent that diagnoses operational problems through multi-step investigation (causal metric graph, sub-queries, root-cause synthesis). Combines hybrid RAG (semantic + BM25 over 794 schema fields), template matching, self-correcting query execution, and full eval/observability pipeline. Non-technical ops staff now self-serve analytics that previously required analyst support.
    • Designed and deployed a real-time anomaly detection platform monitoring the full telehealth patient journey — video calls, intake, SMS, registration, surveys — across 6 partners. 15 statistical checks (z-score anomaly detection against 4-week seasonal baselines), LLM transcript classification with session recovery detection, and a calibrated AI overseer validated via backtesting against 34+ historical scenarios. Runs every 15 minutes; cut mean time-to-detection from hours to minutes.
    • Built and deployed an autonomous AI agent for ops teams — a config-driven, two-pass LLM platform (Gemini) that analyzes call transcripts for patient sentiment, intent, and resolution patterns. Applied across 13+ campaigns and 4 partners. First analysis identified that 23.7% of inbound volume had the lowest resolution rate, directly reshaping the product roadmap.
    • Engineered 15+ Claude Code skills as multi-agent workflows — git branching, validation, metrics comparison, MR generation, and ticket updates — compressing multi-hour processes into single commands.
    July 2025 – October 2025New York, NY

    Founder & Builder

    ThriveAI Labs

    I build AI-powered health platforms at ThriveAI Labs: HealthDiaryAI for tracking and AI insights, and ThriveAI for biohackers and athletes. Paused as I transition to a full-time role.

    • HealthDiaryAI — personal health tracker to log symptoms, habits, meds, and test results; uses AI to surface patterns and next steps. Reached 200+ active users in the first month via targeted outreach and PLG.
    • ThriveAI — performance optimization web/iOS app for biohackers/athletes; connects wearables and health apps (Apple Health, Oura, Strava, etc.) and delivers personalized insights through an AI chatbot.
    • Designed and deployed full-stack features using Next.js / React Native (Expo), Tailwind, Supabase (Postgres, Auth, Realtime), Firebase/Analytics, OpenAI API.
    • Leveraged AI-assisted development to ship production-ready features in weeks, with CI/CD and continuous deployment.
    • Built analytics to surface trends from 1,000+ logs, enabling actionable health insights.
    February 2025 – July 2025Remote

    Product & Strategy Lead

    Apus Network

    Owned cross-functional delivery of feature rollouts, onboarding design, and GTM campaigns — bridging product strategy, engineering execution, and user operations.

    • Owned cross-functional delivery of feature rollouts, onboarding design, and GTM campaigns — bridging product strategy, engineering execution, and user operations.
    • Built a SQL/Python analytics pipeline to identify churn drivers, leveraging data to inform retention strategy and feature prioritization.
    • Designed AI-driven onboarding flows and community programs that reduced early drop-off by 40%.
    • Partnered with clients to gather feedback, rapidly iterate, and deploy fixes using AI-assisted development tools.
    June 2024 – August 2024Washington, DC

    Business Analyst Intern

    Fannie Mae

    Built and launched a 'lessons learned' knowledge system now used by 200+ staff across operations teams, reducing repeated errors by 30%.

    • Built and launched a 'lessons learned' knowledge system now used by 200+ staff across operations teams, reducing repeated errors by 30%.
    • Designed database architecture, tagging schema, and search functions to make operational knowledge reusable.
    • Secured adoption by demonstrating real-time ROI via reduced incident rates in live reporting dashboards.
    June 2023 – August 2023New York, NY

    Nonprofit Consulting Intern

    PwC

    Designed donor strategy for Big Thought nonprofit, improving outreach ROI through strategic analysis.

    • Designed a donor strategy for Big Thought (TX-based nonprofit), identifying high-fit backers through capital flow and mission alignment analysis
    • Built a prospecting framework using stakeholder mapping and fundraising benchmarks, improving outreach ROI and reducing pipeline attrition
    • Diagnosed performance gaps across fundraising and engagement metrics, delivering a targeted playbook that reshaped their investor outreach approach
    June 2022 – June 2023New York, NY

    Technical Research Intern

    CFRA Research

    Consolidated and analyzed customer data to identify high-value services for strategic decision-making.

    • Consolidated and analyzed customer data to pinpoint high-value services, informing strategic decision-making for product development
    Projects

    Featured Work

    Personal projects and applications I've built to solve real problems and explore new technologies.

    Personal Project2025 – Present

    Autonomous Cold Outreach Engine — End-to-End AI Sales System

    Built a fully autonomous, agent-driven sales system that finds local-business prospects, generates a custom website redesign for each one, deploys it to a live preview URL, and sends a personalized 4-email outreach sequence — entirely hands-free. Handles the full pipeline from lead discovery to closed customer with zero human intervention per prospect.

    PythonPlaywrightVercel APIGmail APIPrompt Engineering

    Key Contributions

    • Designed a multi-stage agent pipeline: prospect discovery → site scraping → AI-generated redesign → automated deploy → personalized email sequence → reply handling.
    • Generated 130+ unique, custom-built preview sites for real prospects, each tailored to the business's industry, brand, and existing site.
    • Closed 20+ paying customers ($350–$750 per project) sourced entirely from the autonomous pipeline.
    • Engineered the system to run hands-off: a single command finds a prospect, builds the site, deploys it, and schedules the email sequence.
    HandshakeAI & OpenAIMay 2025 – Present

    GPT-5 Multimodal Evaluation — MOVE Program Fellowship

    Selected for a competitive fellowship to evaluate and improve GPT-5's multimodal capabilities (text, image, video) post-training. Applied a structured, product-minded approach to identify failure modes, reliability gaps, and high-impact improvement opportunities.

    LLM EvaluationMultimodalAlignment & SafetyApplied Research

    Key Contributions

    • Designed targeted evaluation scenarios to stress-test real-world use cases.
    • Produced structured feedback and curated test cases that directly informed fine-tuning for accuracy, usability, and alignment.
    • Collaborated with research teams to ensure findings translated into measurable model improvements.
    Personal Project

    Kalshi Prediction Market Bot

    Fully autonomous prediction-market trading system for Kalshi. Discovers mispriced contracts across economic, weather, and event markets, sizes positions with edge-aware risk controls, and executes hands-free on a daily schedule.

    PythonKalshi APIFRED / Macro DataBacktestingGitHub Actions

    Key Contributions

    • Built a multi-strategy engine (probability-mispricing + macro/FRED signals) with realistic backtesting that accounts for Kalshi's exact fee formula.
    • Designed an autonomous research loop using agent teams to scout strategies, validate them against historical vintages, and merge winners.
    • Engineered look-ahead-safe data pipelines using ALFRED vintages so backtests reflect what was actually knowable at trade time.
    • Runs hands-free on a daily cron via GitHub Actions with full PnL logging and per-strategy attribution.
    Personal Project

    HookWatch — Webhook Monitoring

    Webhook failure detection service that monitors incoming webhooks to catch failures before customers complain. Creates proxy endpoints between webhook senders and your actual endpoints.

    PythonFastAPISQLAlchemyAlerting Systems

    Key Contributions

    • Built proxy endpoint system that forwards webhooks while capturing metrics: volume, success rates, and latency.
    • Implemented intelligent alerting for volume drops (>50%), error rate spikes, and activity gaps.
    • Created failure logging with full payload storage enabling webhook replay for debugging and recovery.
    • Designed dashboard with real-time monitoring and API-key authentication for multi-tenant use.
    Blog

    Thoughts on systems thinking, AI, healthcare, and the art of solving ambiguous problems.