Zachary Poley

Partner, Cto

Clear Ventures · Palo Alto, California, United States

Present

With $330M of committed capital from a world-class institutional investor base that has over $180B of AUM, Clear Ventures provides capital, connections, and company building assistance from the earliest stages of company creation to bold startup teams so their ideas can grow into market-leading companies. We strive to help create opportunity and be measurably helpful to earn the right for the first call from the teams that we collaborate with. More at www.clear.ventures.

Chief Technology Officer

Clear Ventures · Palo Alto, California, United States

Established and executing Clear's software, data, and AI driven approach to venture capital, automating daily venture operations and delivering valuable services to Clear's portfolio. Lead engineering and product development from ideation to deployment, leveraging cutting-edge AI, software, and data-driven technologies. Designing and implementing software to support Clear's Sourcing and Portfolio Services programs, helping portfolio companies with business development, talent, and fundraising data and operations. Building a full-stack venture capital operating system from frontend UX to backend APIs, data pipelines, integrations, and data processing to manage, clean, normalize, and efficiently access and apply AI to large datasets from around the web, APIs, and third-party providers.

Software Engineering Consultant

Zachary Poley Consulting · San Jose, CA

Present

Working with companies large and small as an independent hands-on software engineering resource; generally building new systems from the ground up. Clients included Bain & Company, Volition Beauty, and Ceridian HCM.

External Advisor

Bain & Company

Providing insight, guidance, and hands-on engineering expertise in and around Cloud Native Engineering, Data, People Analytics, and Human Resources technology.

Co-Founder & Cto

Paysa Inc · San Francisco Bay Area

Built Paysa from the ground up working with a talented team of engineers, product managers, designers, growth hackers and data scientists to help people understand what they should be paid. Led the engineering team and managed all secure high availability infrastructure on AWS, while working with data science and product leadership to build real-time personalized salary estimation technology delivered in a clean responsive UX that included 30M aggregated salary pages indexed with Google, used by millions of job seekers and employees to understand how to navigate and maximize their careers.

Director of Product Management

Walmart Labs · San Francisco Bay Area

Helped build and shape the Walmart Exchange marketing and advertising platform (WMX) from the ground up. Led engineering and product management efforts while growing the team from one engineer and one data scientist to a team of 20+ world-class engineers and data scientists collaborating with Walmart eCommerce, Stores, partners and marketing teams to drive large scale incremental profit.

Principal Software Engineer

Walmart Labs

Led engineering efforts while helping build out the team and systems that became the Walmart Exchange marketing platform. Helped build data pipelines with Hive and Hadoop, and frontend tools in Ruby on Rails to leverage Walmart-scale data to measure, target, and optimize marketing efforts.

Software Engineering Consultant

Walmart Labs

Worked with the Demand Generation group on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Partnership Marketing projects, including advertising lift measurement that would become the foundation for the Walmart Exchange marketing platform (WMX). Worked closely with SEM team members to develop reporting UIs in Ruby on Rails to surface SEM data to help internal strategists make data-informed decisions. Wrote a mobile web front-end in Ruby on Rails for in-store mobile product search using indoor mapping solution. Developed a video based iPad app in Objective-C and web backend management UI in Ruby on Rails. Wrote a local store finder web-application using Node.js on the consumer side, and Ruby on Rails for administration/configuration component.

Software Engineering Consultant

Zachary Poley Consulting · San Francisco Bay Area

Worked with companies large and small as an independent hands-on software engineering resource; generally building new systems from the ground up, including web applications, infrastructure, databases, data mining, iOS app development, browser extensions, and more. Clients included Kosmix (acquired by Walmart), Walmart Labs, 500 Friends (acquired by Merkle), and StrongMail (acquired PopularMedia).

Software Engineer

PopularMedia, Inc. (Acquired by StrongMail Systems)

Developed, tested, and scaled web applications supporting thousands of requests per second using Ruby/Rails, Perl, and Javascript. Performance tuned components across client, server, and MySQL database layers. Built and maintained APIs, contact importers (web scrapers), and cross-site Javascript widgets while collaborating with client development teams to troubleshoot integration issues and develop new features.

Software Engineer

Compuware

Worked in the QALoad product team maintaining and developing automated server load testing software. Worked primarily in C++ developing tools for HTTP load testing using a custom, object oriented C++ web browser DOM, flexible HTML parser, and integrated JavaScript engine. Solved problems ranging from HTTP spec adherence to HTML parsing, and/or JavaScript DOM interaction. Worked with Technical Support and QA teams to resolve customer and system testing issues.

Software Engineer

FAAC Incorporated · Ann Arbor, Michigan

FAAC Incorporated is a full-time, high-fidelity simulator manufacturer in the professional driving market based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Worked on the New York City R160 Rail Simulator project, a custom rail simulator built in partnership with NYC MTA. Designed and implemented the instructor operator software suite for the R160 simulator. Developed a real-time 3D rail simulation mission builder and instructor rail track display using DirectX and VB.NET, including graphical performance optimizations such as octree frustum culling, and click/ray-intersection testing to allow the application to display 650 miles of rail track and accompanying railway signals in real-time. Wrote base simulation components running on Linux using C/C++, and Windows GUI components in .NET, including cross-system socket communications for train car fault simulation, the train operator controls touchscreen display, a Pocket PC application for wireless simulation control, and other graphical interfaces used in th…

Autocad Technician, Architect'S Assistant

Lincoln A. Poley Architects · Ann Arbor, Michigan

Worked with my Dad in service of his sole proprietorship Lincoln A. Poley Architects, performing architectural drafting, and modeling for renovation, remodeling, and new construction projects. Worked with AutoCad Lt. to create architectural designs, models, and working drawings. Used SketchUp to create 3D models and renderings. Occasionally helped produce hand drawn sketches, renderings, and physical 3D models.