Licensed Electrical Engineer. Builder of systems for more than 25 years.
Ruel Abion is a co-founder of SpiceWorx and the architect leading its move into AI. A licensed Electrical Engineer by training, he has spent more than twenty-five years building software and systems, from industrial R&D in Japan to the cloud and AI platforms SpiceWorx delivers today.
He started the company in 2001 with his wife and co-founder, Abbie. She built the bridge between people and cultures; he built the systems underneath. That partnership, technical depth paired with human understanding, is still what SpiceWorx runs on.
From industrial R&D to AI systems
An engineering foundation, built the rigorous way.
Ruel's engineering roots run deep. In the late 1990s he worked as a systems engineer in the R&D division of Sumitomo Heavy Industries in Hiratsuka, Japan, writing monitoring and control software in C and C++ for laser welding machines and industrial robotics. He ported a proprietary robot controller from DOS to Windows and learned object-oriented design the rigorous way, inside a Japanese engineering culture that valued precision. That foundation still shows up in how he designs systems today.
Back in the Philippines, he built web systems for early-stage companies before founding SpiceWorx in 2001. He was an early adopter of AWS, running production serverless platforms since 2013, well before the cloud was the default choice. Across those years he delivered full-stack applications in ReactJS, Next.js, Java, and ASP.NET, and provided the long-term hosting and support that kept enterprise clients coming back.
What he builds today
Practical AI systems, end to end.
Ruel now works as an AI Systems Architect, and it is the part of the job he finds most interesting. He designs and deploys production Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems: document ingestion, vector search, and LLM-generated answers wired together into knowledge assistants that businesses can actually rely on. He has built AI knowledge-assistant demonstrations for electrical equipment manufacturers and industrial distributors, the kind of clients who want to see real return before they invest.
He also practices what he sells. SpiceWorx.com itself was built end to end with AI-assisted development workflows using Claude, Codex, and ChatGPT, a working example of the approach he brings to client projects. His engagements run the full span of the work, from architecture and model selection through deployment, observability, and support, rather than handing off a prototype and walking away.
Carrying SpiceWorx forward
New technology, the same reason for building it.
SpiceWorx began as a cross-cultural consultancy bridging Japan and the Philippines. Ruel is the one steering its next chapter, into web and AI systems, while holding on to the belief he and Abbie built it on: that culture and trust come before technology, and that a tool only matters if people use it.
Losing Abbie did not change that belief; it sharpened it. As husband to Abbie and father to their daughter Yuki, Ruel leads the company today with the same care for people that defined its first two decades. The technology is new. The reason for building it is the same.
Outside work
Balance, patience, and staying calm under pressure.
Away from systems and screens, Ruel is a lifelong martial artist. He competed in Tae Kwon Do in college, trained in Arnis, the Filipino martial art of stick and blade, and has practiced Aikido since 2009 to the present. The disciplines share something he carries into his work: balance, patience, and the habit of staying calm under pressure.
At a glance
- Co-founder & AI Systems Architect, SpiceWorx Consultancy, Inc.
- 25+ years across industrial R&D, web, cloud, and AI
- Focus: RAG systems, LLM knowledge assistants, serverless AWS, AI-assisted development
- Licensed Electrical Engineer (R.E.E.), Philippines
- Earlier: Systems Engineer (R&D), Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Japan
- Member: PSIA and IIEE
- English (fluent), Filipino (native), Japanese (JLPT N4)
- BS Electrical Engineering, University of Negros Occidental – Recoletos
About SpiceWorx
Learn more about the company Ruel and Abbie built, and where it is headed.
← Back to About Us