hello.


My name is Spencer Evans and I build great things for mobile and web. I'm a Software Engineer, MBA, explorer and kid at heart.

My Story


I’m currently building amazing things at Naut Games in San Francisco, a company I started with a couple former coworkers. We build our own internal products and develop external client projects.

Before moving to the Bay Area, I completed my MBA at University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management with a focus on entrepreneurship and product innovation. During the course of my studies I had the privilege of working on projects for 3M, Mayo Clinic, Meals on Wheels, and the University of Minnesota. I also served as a Managing Partner for Graduate Volunteer Consultants.

Prior to pursuing an MBA, I spent three years building amazing things at Filament Games, an early-stage educational video game dev shop. As the first employee at a growing startup, I wore many hats. I mostly served as a Software Engineer, Designer, and Production Manager. In these roles I inspired and managed the vision and implementation of award-winning educational video games for major curriculum publishers. Filament also gave me the freedom to take initiative to streamline company operations and drive business development efforts as we grew to 30 employees in just 3 years.

Way back in 2008, I received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Projects


Some of what I've helped build


Resume


What I've done and my skill sets

Download Resume
Professional Experience
NAUT GAMES
San Francisco, CA
Mar 2013 - Present
Co-Founder & Lead Engineer
Co-Founder of a game development shop building entertaining mobile and web experiences
  • Shipped 22 client-project applications and games in use by over 335,000 teachers and 3 million kids today
  • Designed and developed 2 self-published games available on the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon
  • Founded company through an innovative research grant partnership with the University of Minnesota, grew annual revenue to over $500,000 in 2 years and awarded semi-finalist position in the MN Cup startup competition
CARLSON VENTURES
Minneapolis, MN
Mar 2012 - May 2013
Lead Consultant
Lead consultant providing innovation based guidance on idea generation, product development, and service improvement to Fortune 500 companies
  • Led a team of 5 consultants conducting technology and ethnographic research for fortune 500 companies
  • Directed research to identify new, viable product applications for underutilized scientific innovations at 3M
  • Analyzed growth potential of new service lines utilizing existing bioinformatics expertise at Mayo Clinic
  • Applied experience mapping techniques to identify pain points and improve customer experience at CSOM
FACEBOOK
Menlo Park, CA
Jun 2012 - Aug 2012
MBA Intern
Internal consultant building the business case for sustainability focused investment
  • Drove cross-functional efforts to investigate, analyze and plan 24 cost reduction projects
  • Performed technology research and financial analysis to justify investments resulting in $875,000 in savings
  • Programmed tools to automate emissions tracking of over 1,000 supply chain shipments
FILAMENT GAMES
Madison, WI
May 2010 - Jul 2011
Development Manager
Managed the vision, specifications, experience, quality, and development of award winning educational games and websites
  • Managed specifications, budgets, and the development lifecycle for each product by communicating priorities and progress between executives and 5 developer teams; shipped 12 products on time and in budget
  • Conducted storyboarding sessions with the creative and UX teams to transform specifications into mockups
  • Supervised special projects; iOS ports, Facebook integration, localization and accessibility implementations
  • Earned 12 awards and delivered 3 product demos at the 2011 Games Learning Society Conference
FILAMENT GAMES
Madison, WI
Jan 2008 - May 2010
Lead Software Engineer & Designer
Software engineer and designer driving product development from specification through implementation
  • Designed, developed and shipped 4 games in 7 months, including Filament’s 2 most successful products
  • Implemented Agile processes to drive, track and report progress of a 5 person teams with formal metrics
  • Coordinated usability testing, release demonstrations, and analytics tracking to improve product quality
Education
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Minneapolis, MN
Carlson School of Management
Master of Business Administration, May 2013
Emphases: Marketing & Entrepreneurship
Graduate fellow scholarship recipient
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
Madison, WI
Computer Sciences Department
Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, May 2008
Emphases: Computer Graphics & Game Technology
Honors study in data structures and algorithms
Leadership
GRADUATE VOLUNTEER CONSULTANTS, Minneapolis, MN, Dec 2011 - May 2013
Managing Partner
Cultivated client relationships and managed 72 consultants across 34 projects in a non-profit consulting service
MBA STUDENT GOVERNMENT, Minneapolis, MN, Oct 2011 - Mar 2013
Vice President of Information Management
Digitized and streamlined student information and technology resources
Independent Projects
Thread.js: An intuitive JavaScript library for safely managing inline web workers
GifPlayer.js: A multi-threaded JavaScript library for parsing, rendering, and controlling gif animations
Viewport Config: Simple JavaScript library for manipulating HTML viewport meta tags via code
Canvas Resizer: Lightweight JS library for rendering responsive, crisp canvas graphics at any scale
Technologies
Day-to-Day Comfort
  • C# / Java / JavaScript / C++ / C
  • HTML5 / CSS3 / Sass / LESS / JSON
  • Unity / XNA
  • Flash / AS3 / Flex / FlashDevelop
  • Version control: Git / SVN
  • Visual Studio / IntelliJ
  • Agile Methodology
  • Mobile First Thinking
Familiarity
  • Android SDK
  • Bootstrap / CreateJS
  • Ruby on Rails / Heroku
  • SQL / XML
  • WordPress
  • MS Office / Project / VBA
  • Mixpanel / Google Analytics
  • Test Driven Development
Experience With
  • AJAX / jQuery
  • REST
  • .NET
  • OpenGL / DirectX / Shaders
  • Photoshop
  • JIRA
  • Xcode / Eclipse
  • PHP

Let's Get In Touch!


Interested in connecting or discussing a project?
That's great! Ping me and we'll chat.