# Lia Pool **Prototype Engineer (Applied AI)** > Prototype Engineer (Applied AI) • I take ambiguous problems and make them real through building --- ## About I'm the person you hire when you have a problem but not a solution yet. 10 million sessions. 50 million minutes of interaction. That's not platform stats—that's from agents I built, authored, or materially improved: brand ambassadors, celebrity digital twins, AI tutors. I take ambiguous problems and make them real through building. Give me a vague brief and I'll have something working before most people finish their discovery deck. --- ## Professional Summary I'm the person you hire when you have a problem but not a solution yet. 10 million sessions. 50 million minutes of interaction. That's not platform stats—that's from agents I built, authored, or materially improved: brand ambassadors, celebrity digital twins, AI tutors. I take ambiguous problems and make them real through building. Give me a vague brief and I'll have something working before most people finish their discovery deck. --- ## Contact Information - **Contact:** See website or LinkedIn - **LinkedIn:** https://linkedin.com/in/liapool - **Location:** Auckland, NZ - **Work Authorization:** NZ, AU, UK - **Work Style:** Remote-first --- ## Skills --- ## Work Experience ### Senior Experience Engineer | Soul Machines *2021-01 - undefined* Highly autonomous prototype/product role reporting to Chief Product Officer. Built conversational agents that personally generated 10M+ sessions and 50M+ minutes of interaction. **Key Achievements:** - Built agents generating 10M+ user sessions and 50M+ minutes of interaction - Reduced typical response latency to ~2 seconds, with optimized configurations reaching ~1 second - Built conversation analytics and flow-reconstruction tooling adopted as company-wide standard for measuring and improving conversational AI quality - Designed responsible AI framework establishing standards of care for coaching conversations - Created diagnostic tooling and best practices adopted as company-wide implementation baseline **Skills:** LLMs, Unity 3D, Vision AI, Real-time Systems, Multimodal Analysis ### Product Manager, Growth | Soul Machines *2019-07 - 2021-01* Drove platform strategy for conversation orchestration and customer enablement. **Key Achievements:** - Championed and shipped Skills Platform — modular orchestration now embedded in 100K+ deployments with 99% adoption - Designed architecture enabling 6,300+ skills in production, 1,400+ created by third-party customers - Navigated C-suite alignment across multiple development teams to secure engineering investment - Built HelloSam brand ambassador: 30K+ lifetime conversations, improved measured success rate from 50% to 75% **Skills:** Product Management, Conversation Design, NLU Optimization, UX Research ### Solutions Architect | Soul Machines *2018-04 - 2019-07* Technical architecture lead for enterprise implementations across UK, Europe, Singapore, and US. **Key Achievements:** - Designed advanced interaction patterns: graceful failure recovery, complex conversation state management - Managed key accounts: Royal Bank of Scotland, GSK, Heineken, PWC - Presented architecture approaches at NatWest Tech Conference (London), GSK Bots & Automation Conference **Skills:** Solutions Architecture, Enterprise Sales, Client Management, Technical Presentations ### Technical Project Manager | Soul Machines *2017-04 - 2018-04* Delivered foundational conversation engineering patterns for enterprise clients. **Key Achievements:** - Built NLU control logic enabling conversation digressions, complex statement handling, context management — originated the conversation engineering discipline at Soul Machines - Delivered Digital People for Mercedes-Benz, Autodesk, ANZ, Air New Zealand - Established technical standards adopted across all customer implementations **Skills:** Technical Project Management, Conversation Engineering, Watson, Public Speaking ### Co-founder | Flatventure Ltd / Holonize *2015 - 2017* Co-founded AR startup building persistent shared augmented reality before ARKit/ARCore existed. Built novel computer vision systems and demonstrated technical innovation despite market timing challenges. **Key Achievements:** - Built 3D scanning rig: 5 minutes from turntable to live on device - Created QR+Vuforia marker system with synchronized multi-user experiences - Attempted early Android SLAM port before any libraries existed - Scanning rig donated to University of Auckland—reportedly still in use **Skills:** Unity 3D, Computer Vision, AR/VR, Hardware Prototyping, Startup Leadership ### Contract Development Manager | SuiteBox Ltd *2016-01 - 2016-04* Brought in to stabilize failing video conferencing platform for remote document signing. **Key Achievements:** - Stabilized platform within ~2 months after system-wide technical analysis - Introduced agile DevOps processes and regular release cadence **Skills:** DevOps, Team Management, System Analysis, Agile ### Game Developer | Self-employed *2013 - 2015* Prototyped interactive media in Unity; authored non-linear dialogue systems. **Key Achievements:** - Project 'His Shadow': point-and-click adventure exploring memory and identity **Skills:** Unity 3D, Game Development, Dialogue Systems, Prototyping ### Business Analyst | Various (Contract) *2012 - 2013* Contract business analyst roles for enterprise clients. **Key Achievements:** - Designed mobile-first container inspection system saving 3 hours per inspector per day - Technical documentation for marketing website - overseas dev team completed implementation without clarification or rework **Skills:** Business Analysis, Requirements Documentation, Mobile UX, Technical Writing ### Project Coordinator | SmartTrade Ltd *2011 - 2013* Hired as testing intern; grew to manage design, support, and maintenance schedules for four products. **Key Achievements:** - Voice of the customer for job management SaaS (SmartTrade) and EDI platform (Smeedi) - Built automated testing framework using VMs and AutoIt with state management and reporting - Created InstallShield installer; maintained early mobile JavaScript platform **Skills:** QA/Testing, Test Automation, Product Coordination, Customer Advocacy --- ## Portfolio / Case Studies ### Skills Platform **From 90 Days to Minutes** Customers spent 90 days trying to ship a conversational AI. I championed and drove creation of a modular conversation orchestration platform (engineering implemented core platform), reducing time-to-POC from ~90 days to minutes for template deployments. When LLMs arrived, the architecture was ready. **Metrics:** - Production deployments: 100K+ - Platform adoption: 99% - Skills in production: 6,300+ - Customer-created skills: 1,400+ - Time to value: 90 days → minutes (template POCs) **Problem Space:** 90+ day time-to-first-conversation, every deployment bespoke, no reusable components, Soul Machines excluded conversation design from scope. **What I Did:** Championed from three roles, built prototypes instead of decks, navigated C-suite alignment. **What Was Built:** - Skills Platform orchestration - No-code assembly - Elegant failure skill - Generative Conversation Skill (GPT/RAG) **Adoption:** 100K+ deployments, 99% adoption, 6,300+ skills, 1,400+ customer-created. **Outcome:** - ~90 days to minutes for template POCs - Platform-wide ~23M sessions / ~2.5M hours - Foundation for all LLM integration - Patent pending (WO2022149076A1 / US20240054292A1) **Why This Matters:** Built the thing that let everyone else build things. Architecture from 2019-2020 enabled seamless LLM integration in 2023+. **Keywords:** Conversation Design, No-code, Platform, B2B, NLU --- ### Making AI Feel Like Someone's Actually There **Three Seconds Is an Eternity in Conversation** Conversational AI that feels slow feels like a voice interface with loading screens. I mapped the full response pipeline, introduced streaming, TTS prediction, and parallelization to reduce typical latency to ~2 seconds, with optimized configurations reaching ~1 second. Then added vision so agents could actually see you. **Metrics:** - Response latency: ~2 sec typical (~1s optimized) **Problem Space:** Multi-second accumulated latency across STT/NLU/TTS/animation pipeline, zero environmental awareness. **What I Did:** Mapped entire pipeline stage by stage, restructured architecture to stream/predict/parallelize, integrated vision LLMs. **What Was Built:** - Pipeline instrumentation - Streaming responses - TTS prediction - Vision integration - Multimodal analysis **Adoption:** Applied across agents I built, authored, or materially improved. **Outcome:** - Typical response latency reduced to ~2 seconds - Optimized configurations reaching ~1 second (varies by provider/config) - Vision creates unprompted "magic moments" **Why This Matters:** Every millisecond saved compounds across millions of interactions. Latency is the difference between demo and product. **Keywords:** Performance, Real-time Systems, Streaming, Vision AI, Multimodal, LLM --- ### Flatventure: Building Shared AR Before the Tools Existed **Nothing We Needed Existed Yet** Co-founded an AR startup in 2015 to build persistent shared augmented reality -- before ARKit, before ARCore, before any of the tools that exist today. Built novel computer vision systems from scratch. **Metrics:** - Scan to device: 5 minutes - Expo scans: 240 - SLAM: Hand-ported to Android **Problem Space:** Persistent shared AR required spatial tracking, 3D pipelines, multi-user sync -- nothing existed as libraries. **What I Did:** Co-founded company, led all technical development, built scanning hardware and marker systems. **What Was Built:** - 3D scanning pipeline (5 min turntable-to-device) - Multi-Kinect interference solution - Synchronized multi-user AR - Hand-ported SLAM **Adoption:** 240 scans at Armageddon Expo, rig donated to University of Auckland. **Outcome:** - Working shared AR platform - Ended due to market timing (not execution) - Skills transferred to Soul Machines **Why This Matters:** Building before tools exist. Same instinct that built this rig later built the Skills Platform. **Keywords:** AR/VR, Computer Vision, 3D Scanning, SLAM, Unity, Startup --- ### Standards of Care: Responsible AI for Coaching Conversations **Protecting Users, Engineers, and Company** AI coaching agents handle sensitive territory daily. I designed the framework for how they should behave -- non-judgmental coaching that still redirects self-destructive thinking, protecting users, engineers, and company. **Metrics:** - Monthly conversations: 25,000+ - Coaching agents: Multiple (finance, conversations, pitch) - Framework adoption: Company-wide **Problem Space:** 25K+ monthly coaching conversations entering sensitive territory, no framework for boundaries, engineers exposed to distressing logs. **What I Did:** Designed Standards of Care addressing three stakeholders: users, engineers, company. **What Was Built:** - Standards of Care framework - Content Moderation policy - Distinctive conversational voice - Hundreds of embedded boundary decisions **Adoption:** All coaching agents, 25K+ monthly conversations, company-wide policy. **Outcome:** - Authored Soul Machines' Content Moderation policy - Proactive protection built before incidents **Why This Matters:** Operational AI ethics -- hundreds of specific decisions, not abstract policy. Framework that actually ships. **Keywords:** AI Ethics, Content Moderation, Coaching, Conversation Design, Policy --- ### Body of Work **10 Million Sessions of Craft** 37 shipped projects across 8 years. Brand ambassadors, celebrity digital twins, AI tutors -- 10 million sessions and 50 million minutes of interaction, built, authored, or materially improved. **Metrics:** - User sessions: 10M+ - Minutes of interaction: 50M+ - Celebrity digital twins: 4 **Problem Space:** Making people want to talk to AI a second time -- same core problem, different surfaces. **What I Did:** Built, authored, or materially improved every agent -- conversation design through production deployment. Iterated across 8 years. **What Was Built:** - HelloSam (50%→75% success) - Digital twins (Mark Tuan, Francis Ngannou, Marilyn Monroe, Jack Nicklaus - 253K sessions) - AI tutors (25K+ conversations/month) - Name recognizer (10K names from 25 examples) - 37 Digital People shipped **Adoption:** ~10M user sessions, ~50M minutes across agents built, authored, or materially improved. **Outcome:** - Typical response latency reduced to ~2s - HelloSam became internal gold standard - Each project informed the next **Why This Matters:** Not separate projects -- iterations. Each one taught something that made the next one better. **Keywords:** Conversational AI, Digital Twins, AI Tutors, Latency Optimization, Scale --- ## Education - **Diploma of Business Systems** | Computer Power Institute | 2010 - 2011 B+ average. Included MCTS, SCJD, SQL, web development, soft skills. - **NZ Certificate in Business (Small Business)** | Open Polytechnic | 2022 - Present Completed - **Bachelor of Computer Science (Incomplete)** | University of Auckland | 2008 - 2009 Left for more practical training --- ## Patents & Credentials ### Conversation Orchestration in Interactive Agents Patent Number: WO2022149076A1 Published: 2022-07-14 Methods for driving multi-modal human-computer interactions through orchestrated skill modules. Covers modular conversation 'skills' that snap together dynamically. --- ## Speaking & Presentations - Better Way to Fly Promotional Event, Los Angeles (Air New Zealand) - NatWest Tech Conference, London (Royal Bank of Scotland) - Bots and Automation Conference, London (GSK) - Relevent.dk - AI & Robotics, Copenhagen (Relevent.dk) - Naval Engineering Forum, Auckland (Royal New Zealand Navy) - CAPA Exhibition, Auckland (CAPA) - Air New Zealand Sales Conference, Auckland (Air New Zealand) - IBM AI Happy Hour, Auckland (IBM) --- ## Testimonials > "I've worked with Lia Pool for around eight years, across multiple roles and phases at Soul Machines, and she is genuinely one of the most capable and creative people I've worked with. Lia's real sweet spot is experience engineering. She has an exceptional ability to think beyond existing constraints, spot real customer needs, and then actually build working solutions quickly. I regularly see her prototype things in days that others have said were too hard, or they just hadn't thought of. She is deeply technically fluent, comfortable moving across stacks and codebases, and pairs that with strong product sense and empathy for the customer. She listens carefully, extracts insight, and you can see that thinking show up clearly in the solutions she delivers. What makes Lia stand out is that this didn't come out of nowhere. Her background in product management and solutions architecture gives her a rare end-to-end view. She understands the problem, the customer, the business context, and the tech, and she can bring it all together herself. On top of that, she has spent years working directly with customers, patiently guiding them through complex technical and organisational challenges, often on site and under pressure. Lia is kind, thoughtful, and highly capable, and she consistently operates at the intersection of experience, technology, and real customer value." > > -- Brook Warner, Director of Product Management > "I've worked on and off with Lia over the years at Soul Machines, most recently syncing up regularly while she was deep in prototype work and I was in engineering. Even when we weren't on the same project, we'd check in daily - sharing problems, offering feedback, helping each other think through how to present ideas to stakeholders. She was a fantastic sounding board, always honest, always generous with her thinking. What stands out most about Lia is her ability to make the abstract real. She takes research, ambiguity, a half-formed "what if" - and turns it into something you can actually see and demo. Not just for the sake of building, but tied to a business outcome: a sales pitch, a proof of concept, a reason to believe an idea has legs. She can make a really good demo, and that's rarer than it sounds. She's also consistently ahead of the curve - trying new tools and approaches before the rest of us are ready, then showing what's possible. And she's obsessed with the user's experience in a way that's grounded, not theoretical. She's done the CS work, been in the trenches, knows what "natural and delightful" actually requires. Lia goes where she's needed. In volatile startup moments, she's a silver bullet - whatever the problem, she'll figure it out." > > -- Reuben Smith, Senior Software Engineer > "Everyone was really happy with how Lia ran the demonstration and was in control of it all. There are so many elements going on at these events that's it's great to have people you can trust and rely on." > > -- Anonymous, undefined --- ## Availability - **Available for hire:** Yes - **Preferred contact:** email - **Target roles:** Prototype Engineer, Experience Engineer, Applied AI Engineer - **Target domains:** Conversational AI, AR/Spatial Computing, Embodied AI, Human-Computer Interaction