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★ Matteo Hertel

Curriculum vitae

Matteo Hertel

AI Principal Engineer

AI Principal Engineer. Fractional CTO. Serial Founder.

Builds AI-first products and the teams to ship them.

01 / Impact

Recent impact, measured

Recent outcomes

YearEngagementWhat shippedResultSector
2026

Built Nova AI from zero

LDT flagship AI product and primary sales differentiator

Shipped evals, retrieval, prompt infrastructure, model selection, and UTM Builder as the AI-native feature template.

$5M+ ARR pipeline · 30+ organisers · 25% WoW

AI · B2B
2025

Built Delivery from scratch

New function that relieved GTM pressure

Owned client requirements, stakeholder relationship, cadence, and organiser-side delivery across concurrent workstreams.

$1.1M ARR · 0 to 7 people · 5+ engagements

Ops · B2B
2025

Moved AI into the operating model

Adoption moved beyond demos and individual experimentation

Created Claude Academy, Prompt & Play, department workshops, AI Tenets, and engineer tooling budget infrastructure.

12 months · 50+ sessions · $200/eng/month

AI · Org
2024

Solo-founded OneStep

Consumer product judgement earned directly

Shipped a React Native app, tested pricing and paywalls, then pivoted from D2C to B2B after market evidence.

15K+ downloads · no team · no funding

Mobile · B2C

02 / Projects

Selected work

Project 01

Nova AI

Flagship AI product at Let's Do This. Built from zero and became the primary AI-first sales differentiator.

Result: $5M+ ARR pipeline · 30+ organisers · 25% WoW
View evidence
  • ★Built Nova AI from zero into LDT's flagship AI product, measured by 30+ organiser beta users, 25% WoW growth, and $5M+ ARR in-room pipeline
  • ★Shipped Nova V2 + Opus 4.5 three days after model release by building eval harnesses, model-selector infrastructure, and regression checks
  • ★Justified a dedicated Nova squad by shipping 10+ major features in two months and making resource investment obvious
  • ★Defined the AI-first development template by shipping UTM Builder as the first ground-up AI-native feature
  • ★Built the platform layer behind Nova features: prompt management, logging, observability, retrieval, and long-context handling

Project 02

AI Transformation @ LDT

Changed how a 50-200 person scale-up builds software, moving AI from novelty to operating model.

Result: 12 months · 50+ sessions · $200/eng/month
View evidence
  • ★Drove company-wide AI adoption from 0% to "AI is our default" in 12 months by turning demos, rituals, and tooling into operating infrastructure
  • ★Enabled non-engineers to ship production code for the first time by running Claude Academy, 14+ Prompt & Play sessions, and 5+ department workshops
  • ★Turned individual experimentation into a company system by authoring AI Tenets and establishing a $200/month AI tooling budget per engineer

Project 03

Delivery Function

Built a new client-delivery function and owned the enterprise relationship that made it commercially real.

Result: $1.1M ARR · 0 to 7 people · 5+ engagements
View evidence
  • ★Built Delivery from non-existence to a 7-person team in 4 months, enabling 5+ simultaneous client engagements
  • ★Enabled fulfilment of a $1.1M ARR client commitment by owning the key client relationship end-to-end
  • ★Unlocked retention and expansion by shipping organiser-side requirements including Single Customer View, discount codes, and waivers

Project 04

ViableCloud / ViableAI

Independent technical leadership and AI advisory for founders and CEOs who need senior judgement before a full-time hire.

Result: 28 days to paid · CEO advisory · fractional CTO
View evidence
  • ★Co-founded ViableCloud as secure cloud-infrastructure consulting, then evolved the offer into ViableAI as the market moved toward AI transformation
  • ★Productised the transformation model for CEOs of 20-500 person companies: leadership using AI daily before scaling what works
  • ★Shipped LandingPageWizard from zero to paying customers in 28 days, proving the advisory thesis with a working SaaS product
  • ★Applied the AI-first operating playbook outside LDT as Fractional CTO for a private premium nutrition brand, owning website, e-commerce, infrastructure, SEO, CRM, and integrations

Project 05

OneStep

Solo-founded D2C accountability app. React Native, tRPC, Supabase.

Result: 15K+ downloads · no team · no funding
View evidence
  • ★Reached 15,000+ downloads as a solo founder by shipping a React Native movement-habits app without a team
  • ★Tested monetisation through pricing, paywall, and hybrid app + 1:1 coaching experiments before concluding D2C consumer was the wrong market shape
  • ★Pivoted into B2B cloud infrastructure and wrote a public post-mortem on customer discovery, pricing, and the engineer's tax
  • ★Used ChatGPT-assisted component development in February 2023, two years before AI-first development became mainstream

03 / Experience

Experience

FEB 2025 — PRESENT

Let's Do This

AI Principal Engineer

Returned to a 50-200 person scale-up, built Nova AI from zero, built Delivery from zero, and drove company-wide AI adoption. Promoted to AI Principal Engineer in March 2026.

View evidence
  • ★Built Nova AI from zero into the flagship AI product, measured by 30+ organiser beta users, 25% WoW growth, and $5M+ ARR in-room pipeline
  • ★Built Delivery from non-existence to 7 people in 4 months, enabling 5+ simultaneous client engagements and a $1.1M ARR client commitment
  • ★Drove AI adoption from 0% to company default in 12 months by creating Claude Academy, Prompt & Play, AI Tenets, and tooling budget infrastructure

DEC 2024 — PRESENT

ViableCloud / Private Client

Co-Founder · Fractional CTO

Independent technical leadership across AI advisory, cloud infrastructure, SaaS experiments, and fractional CTO work for founders.

View evidence
  • ★Built ViableCloud into the home for independent work: fractional engineering leadership, secure cloud infrastructure, and AI transformation advisory
  • ★Shipped LandingPageWizard from zero to paying customers in 28 days by building in public and productising the advisory thesis
  • ★Owns a private client's technical build as one-person tech team: website, e-commerce, infrastructure, SEO, CRM flows, and integrations

FEB 2023 — JUL 2024

OneStep / OneStepFitness Ltd

Solo Founder

D2C consumer mobile app for movement habits. Built and shipped solo to 15K+ downloads before pivoting into B2B technical leadership.

View evidence
  • ★Reached 15K+ downloads by shipping the React Native app as a solo founder and applying founder-led product judgement end-to-end
  • ★Learned the monetisation limits of free consumer habit apps by testing pricing, paywalls, and hybrid coaching

JAN 2019 — JAN 2023

Let's Do This (first stint)

Lead Engineer

Full-stack product work on a high-growth events marketplace; joined pre-Series A and led through $15M Series A and $60M Series B.

View evidence
  • ★Led engineering work as the marketplace scaled to 5M+ users globally, building the relationship that brought him back as Principal in 2025

SEP 2017 — JAN 2019

Skyscanner

Senior Software Engineer

Backpack open-source design system. 256 commits, 223 PRs at 1000+ person scale.

View evidence
  • ★Shipped accessibility, theming, and component primitives used company-wide, building design-system judgement at scale

OCT 2016 — JUL 2017

noon

Full Stack Tech Lead

Frontend, backend, and DevOps lead on noon's Dubai e-commerce platform launch.

View evidence
  • ★Scaled an image-resize Lambda service to 7.5M+ images and built production deployment pipelines across 6 web applications

FEB 2010 — SEP 2016

Feast Creative · Samui Design · Freelance

Earlier Engineering Roles

Agency, proprietary CMS, integrations, SEO, and long-running freelance work across Italy, Germany, and the UK.

View evidence
  • ★Ported a LAMP CMS from PHP 5.3 to PHP 7, added PSR-4 class loading, caching, build tooling, Cloudflare proxying, and third-party integrations

04 / Stack

Technical capability

Mapped by use case

Technologies grouped by where they create leverage: core engineering, AI products, frameworks, and infrastructure.

CORE

TypeScriptJavaScriptNode.jsPythonGoBun

LLM & AI

Claude APIAnthropicOpenAIVercel AI SDKMCPRAGHybrid searchEmbeddingsEvalsClaude CodeCursorDevinv0

FRAMEWORKS

ReactRSCReact NativeNext.jstRPCSupabasePrismaTamaguiGraphQLTailwind

INFRASTRUCTURE

AWSAzureCloudflareVercelPostgreSQLMongoDBgRPCDockerServerless
View evidence

The stack is grouped for judgement rather than keyword density. Ask for the specific tools used in Nova, OneStep, client delivery, or earlier infrastructure work.

05 / Education

Education

Self-directed foundations

A self-directed route into software, backed by 15+ years of shipped work.

2010 — PRESENT

Self-taught

ITCG E. Fermi (dropout)

Dropped out of an accountancy degree at ITCG E. Fermi in northern Italy to teach myself the web. 15+ years shipping since.

View evidence

Education gives context. The stronger signal is the sustained record across agency, marketplace, infrastructure, product, and AI work.

Matteo Hertel

AI Principal Engineer

AI Principal Engineer. Fractional CTO. Serial Founder.

Builds AI-first products and the teams to ship them.

London, UK

hertel.matteo@gmail.com

/in/hertelmatteo

github.com/matteo-hertel

Projects

Nova AI

AI product I built from scratch at Let's Do This. The reason LDT now positions itself as AI-first.

  • Beta with 30+ organisers, 25% week-over-week growth. Primary sales differentiator
  • Multi-provider LLM in production via Vercel AI SDK - abstraction layer that swaps providers in days
  • Eval harness shipped the Opus 4.5 upgrade 3 days after release
  • Prompt management, logging, observability, retrieval, and long-context handling

AI Transformation @ LDT

Drove a 200-person scale-up from 0% AI adoption to "AI is our default" in 12 months.

  • Claude Academy 101 & 102, 14+ Prompt & Play, 30 Days of AI, Advent of AI
  • Non-engineers shipping production code for the first time in company history

ViableAI

Co-founded AI advisory for CEOs of 20-500 person companies who want to be AI-native.

  • Two-stage model: leadership using AI daily, before scaling what works
  • Also shipped LandingPageWizard SaaS to 3 paying customers

OneStep

Solo-founded D2C accountability app. React Native, tRPC, Supabase.

  • 15,000+ downloads as a solo founder. Filed OneStepFitness Ltd
  • Wrote ChatGPT-assisted components Feb 2023, before LLM-coding was mainstream
  • Iterated through pricing, paywall, hybrid coaching pivot. Public post-mortem

History

AI Principal Engineer

Let's Do This FEB 2025 — PRESENT

Returned to a 50-200 person scale-up, built Nova AI from zero, built Delivery from zero, and drove company-wide AI adoption. Promoted to AI Principal Engineer in March 2026.

Co-Founder · Fractional CTO

ViableCloud / Private Client DEC 2024 — PRESENT

Independent technical leadership across AI advisory, cloud infrastructure, SaaS experiments, and fractional CTO work for founders.

Solo Founder

OneStep / OneStepFitness Ltd FEB 2023 — JUL 2024

D2C consumer mobile app for movement habits. Built and shipped solo to 15K+ downloads before pivoting into B2B technical leadership.

Lead Engineer

Let's Do This (first stint) JAN 2019 — JAN 2023

Full-stack product work on a high-growth events marketplace; joined pre-Series A and led through $15M Series A and $60M Series B.

Senior Software Engineer

Skyscanner SEP 2017 — JAN 2019

Backpack open-source design system. 256 commits, 223 PRs at 1000+ person scale.