Wilson Ler
Engineer turned founder; search, memory, and AI agents
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Wilson Ler Wei Sheng is a computer engineer and co-founder based in Toronto, Canada, with a career that traces an unusual arc from maritime robotics competitions to early-stage engineering at a search startup, and ultimately to building AI tools for knowledge management. He co-founded Beloga, a knowledge amplification platform, and is currently a Senior Full Stack Engineer at Constructor and a Fellow in the ODF23 cohort. His core technical interest is applying search and memory to AI agents 1.
Wilson's introduction to serious engineering happened not in a classroom but in a boat — or rather, a small autonomous one. From his first semester at the National University of Singapore in 2017, he joined Bumblebee Autonomous Systems, NUS's storied student robotics team that builds autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) for international maritime robotics competitions 2.
The work was technically dense. Wilson built computer vision algorithms for both the AUV and the surface vessel — specifically object identification and tracking systems for real-time maritime perception. These were not hobbyist projects: Bumblebee competed annually at RoboSub (San Diego) and RobotX (Honolulu), events that draw graduate-level robotics teams from around the world 2.
In 2018, the results were exceptional. Bumblebee's surface vessel team took first place at the international RobotX 2018 Maritime Challenge, and the AUV team placed second at RoboSub 2018. Wilson contributed to both, publishing technical design papers that detailed the computer vision and autonomy systems he helped build 5. Both papers are a matter of public record in the international robotics community.
The experience left a permanent mark. Years later, Wilson described himself as passionate about seeing hardware and software work "in harmony to create a complete system — a system that can react to changes in its environment without human intervention." 2
He was also awarded the DSTA Merit Scholarship from Singapore's Defence Science and Technology Agency during this period — a competitive award given to promising engineering students connected to Singapore's national defense technology ecosystem 2.
In 2019, Wilson was selected for NUS Overseas Colleges' Silicon Valley program (Batch 36), a competitive scheme that places NUS students in Silicon Valley startups while they audit courses at Stanford. He audited CS229 — Andrew Ng's machine learning course — and produced a project that is documented in the course's public archives 1.
That year also included a research internship at DSO National Laboratories (Singapore's national defense R&D institute) from May through July 2019, alongside his TA role teaching CS2040C (Data Structures and Algorithms) at NUS under Dr. Steven Halim 1.
In August 2019, Wilson joined Constructor — an e-commerce search and discovery platform — as a Software Engineer. What followed was a five-year tenure that saw him grow from an individual contributor to an Engineering Manager, and the company from a $50M to a $550M valuation 1.
As a software engineer, Wilson worked across the platform: revamping API documentation, building catalog configuration interfaces, implementing time-based searchandizing rules with conflict resolution logic, adding multilingual search detection across French, Dutch, and English, and optimizing redirect rules that reduced indexing time by 50 percent 1.
When he moved into an Engineering Manager role in August 2021, he founded and led a team of full-stack engineers to build a quiz platform for e-commerce guided experiences. He streamlined the team's hiring pipeline and buddy system, reducing onboarding time by 30 percent. He also developed customer merchandizing tools that improved clickthrough rates, implemented OpenAPI auto-documentation generation (eliminating manual documentation needs), and built a Sentry auto-assignment bot that improved error handling coverage by 80 percent 1.
Constructor CEO Eli Finkelshteyn later described Wilson publicly as "one of the best engineers we had" when he left to co-found Beloga 4.
While at Constructor, Wilson also pursued a Master of Applied Computing in Computer Science from the University of Windsor (January 2023 – April 2024) — a deliberate investment in theoretical foundations during a period of intense practical experience 1.
In February 2024, Wilson left Constructor to co-found Beloga with Jerica Kuah. Beloga was a knowledge amplification platform designed to help individuals and teams capture, connect, and develop collective insights — essentially a more intelligent, connected approach to knowledge management than existing tools like Notion or Confluence offered 3.
The technical stack was built around Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Large Language Models, and Next.js. Wilson led product development and technical architecture from zero to one, building the MVP in six months and launching it. At launch, Beloga earned 2nd Product of the Day on Product Hunt, a significant validation in the consumer and prosumer software market 1.
In a podcast appearance in October 2024, Wilson and Jerica discussed the experience of building a startup between Canada and Singapore — navigating the different entrepreneurial ecosystems, the challenges of founding across timezones, and the future they saw for AI-powered knowledge management 3.
Beloga ran through January 2025.
Wilson's project history reveals someone who builds things the way other people take notes — constantly and for the pleasure of it. His side projects include:
After Beloga wound down, Wilson returned to Constructor in March 2025 as a Senior Full Stack Engineer, working on the Sponsored Listings product. In parallel, he was accepted to ODF23 — an intensive one-week in-person cohort in San Francisco focused on meeting collaborators, exploring new ideas, and building conviction about the next venture 1.
His stated current interest: applying search and memory to AI agents — a natural synthesis of his work across robotics, Constructor's search platform, and Beloga's knowledge-management thesis 1.