Portrait of Eli Smith

I'm Eli

Professional chaos-untangler by day, incorrigible tinkerer by night.

About

I'm drawn to messy problems, the kind with competing constraints, incomplete information, and no obvious answer. My job is turning them into systems people can understand and trust.

At WAVV I build intelligent products across telecommunications, automation, optimization, and applied AI. Before this I led WAVV's development team, and that shaped how I engineer today: start with the real problem, keep the solution as simple as it can be, involve the people closest to it, and build for the realities of production.

I'm most energized by the work that sits between product and engineering, turning ambitious ideas into dependable systems, helping teams adopt new technology thoughtfully, and creating clarity amid complexity.

Work

  1. 2025–present

    AI Systems Engineer · WAVV

    Designing intelligent systems across AI, automation, optimization, and core product infrastructure.

  2. 2022–2025

    Development Team Lead

    Led development of a platform spanning calling, messaging, billing, compliance, and integrations.

  3. 2021–2022

    Senior Back End Engineer

    Built features across the telecom stack while shaping how the team shipped them.

  4. 2019–2021

    Back End Engineer

    Built the foundations of the platform in Node.js, FreeSWITCH, PostgreSQL, and Linux.

  5. 2016–2019

    Full Stack Engineer · Freelance

    Serverless applications, APIs, and custom integrations across AWS and GCP.

Selected work at WAVV

  • Smart Rotation

    An automated number-management system that monitors number health, balances usage, manages capacity, and favours stronger-performing numbers to improve calling outcomes.

  • AI Assistants

    Assistants that help customers understand their activity, navigate the product, and work through complex telecom compliance processes.

  • Voice Intelligence

    Features that summarize conversations, identify call outcomes, surface coaching insights, and improve how calls get handled.

  • Operational Automation

    Turning operational data into automated decisions, reporting, and safeguards across number reputation, compliance, and call performance.

What I work with

Languages

TypeScript, JavaScript, Bash

Platform

Node.js, PostgreSQL, Linux, FreeSWITCH

Cloud

GCP, AWS, OpenAI, Groq

Focus

Applied AI, backend development, DevOps

Now

Running AI models on my own hardware rather than someone else's: local transcription, local generation, and working out where the quality actually falls over.

Otherwise: terminal tooling and dotfiles I will never finish tuning, a homelab that keeps growing, and the occasional midnight tweak that has no business existing.

Get in touch