YOUVERSION EXPERIENCE
Logan Spencer
Platform architect, technical leader, and force multiplier
Hired: February 7, 2022
Get as MarkdownPlatform architect, technical leader, and force multiplier
Hired: February 7, 2022
Get as Markdown"Continue to be amazed by your curiosity and innovation and creative use of AI to improve our internal tools! #Initiative #Excellence"
Since joining YouVersion in February 2022, I've grown from individual contributor to technical leader—taking on platform architecture, leading a 5-person engineering team, and delivering organization-wide impact.
Toward the end of 2022, only six months after starting at YouVersion, I led the technical architecture and shaping for Church Posts (Announcements)—defining the system design and implementation strategy for this cross-platform feature.
"I was looking around Notion to see other people's engineering review docs, and wow I just have to say that I am SUPER IMPRESSED with what you wrote for Announcements! It looks Amazing and so detailed! Great job"
As a Senior Engineer with only six months of experience, I was writing standout shaping documents. Not only standout, but entirely accurate—our implementation was completed ON TIME.
Explored Airtable as CMS for Segments Guided Story Experience. After weeks of meetings with conflicting visions, identified that Airtable wasn't the right solution. Faced heavy skepticism but continued pushing back across multiple stakeholder meetings.
Devised hybrid approach: Use Airtable as backend (Content Team already comfortable), build custom frontend application. Received more skepticism due to history of slow development. Built proof-of-concept demo in 2 days on personal time. Stakeholders impressed—asked for full implementation plan.
Developed end-to-end plan with complete phased JIRA strategy. Launched successfully to production on schedule.
Story Builder became Content Team's primary tool with 12+ publishing partners. Successfully supports every new experimental feature YouVersion explores.
"Thank you so much for your perseverance, patience and expert problem solving with all things Story Builder not to mention speed! I also appreciate your good nature and attentiveness!"
"@LoganSpencer You never cease to amaze me with all the cool things you build on top of your normal day-to-day work tasks. You truly love what you do and it shows."
"You got a shout-out and a 'power clap' yesterday in our KPI leader meeting because of your great work leveraging AirTable to solve a very needed issue for my team!"
"Great perseverance on the stories / airtable solution. You clearly put in a ton of time, energy, and effort to get us to a good solution."
"Great job on the Airtable research, and for persevering through the ambiguity of this phase of invention! Fun to work together with you on it."
Side note: During this time also developed YouVersion Roles & Permission Management page—saving hundreds of man-hours. Built without being asked, without impacting assigned work.
Moved to Bible.com team. Tasked with simplifying language addition strategy. Quickly digested new codebase, created type-safe configuration system, refactored large portions for maintainability. Configuration system still actively developed today.
"Thanks for your help in the earlier part of this year reorganizing, improving and simplifying the BDC language and localization things! This week we launched 10 more languages with 330M reach and it was the biggest language launch for BDC in a long time. Thanks for your contributions that helped make it possible!"
When login.youversion.com had a fundamental issue blocking all CI/CD review apps—a problem that had lingered for months—I fixed it on my own time without being asked, removing a major bottleneck for every application.
Joined new team with Larry Morton. Goal: Take over scattered applications from API team. Quickly identified architectural problems—applications in varied technologies, scattered patterns. Currently serving as Tech Lead for 5 engineers, driving technical direction and architecture decisions for the platform.
Presented solution: Internal Tools dashboard as single sign-on hub. After collaborating with architecture, repurposed Support Portal, migrated Django app (Ambulance) as first integrated feature. Led refactor completed in 4 sprints.
"Fantastic work delivering the Support Portal on time for a successful stakeholder test event! Also so impressed with the team's ongoing ability to move fast and fix issues after test events really quickly! #Excellence #Trustworthiness"
Web Dev Mastery: Noticed gaps between engineer knowledge and assigned tasks. Developed training materials with guided lessons and AI-graded training repository. Engineers found it valuable for advancing skills.
YouVersion CMS - Optimizely: Entrusted with leading web development efforts. .NET background gave confidence in Optimizely direction. Planned and led development, performed 80%+ of frontend implementation (Optiframe). Active development continues.
Merge Reporter: Identified recurring problem—stakeholders couldn't understand what was actually fixed in completed tickets. Built AI-powered tool that analyzes commits, generates stakeholder-friendly reports in Jira. Costs YouVersion <$30/year using Claude API. Idea to deployment in <2 weeks while handling CMS work and team lead duties.
"@LoganSpencer @JoshBirdwell @LoladeOpaola @JacobHalverson congrats on winning the hackathon! Outstanding work and presentation."
Beyond individual technical contributions, I actively elevate team capabilities and create organizational impact.
"@LoganSpencer you are one of the smartest people I know. You see a problem and you will spend 'personal-unasked-for-definitely-not-required' time to solve it! And what's even cooler is that the problem you solve benefits the whole Web Team. Annnnnd you are so humble about it!"
Currently lead 5-person engineering team, providing technical guidance, code review, and strategic direction.
"Thank you so much for all the extra effort you put towards helping on Story Builder this week. You always encourage me to work hard and give my all to this mission. Your expertise and guidance is always appreciated! Whenever I'm stuck you always take the time to help me get unblocked."
"Thank you for consistently giving me great feedback on my code, and pushing for the best solutions! You're a big inspiration to me."
"He's knowledgeable, encouraging, kind, and a great person to work with. So much to learn from him!"
My approach emphasizes identifying and solving problems before they're assigned:
"@LoganSpencer @LaurenDove Great work this sprint team! We have been consistently closing out our sprints on a high note. Enjoy working with you both!"
"@JoshBirdwell and @LoganSpencer helped me a ton by integrating me into their team and project for the Hackathon. I got to learn and see a lot during the week and appreciated being able to contribute a bit."
"@LoganSpencer @HannahBethapudi Fantastic work on your Hackathon projects this week! You should be so proud! #Initiative #WorkEthic"
I lead by
shipping platforms others extend,
not features that need maintenance.
I push back on bad architectures with
working alternatives.
I build tools that
multiply entire teams.