About Me
Hi, I’m Austin. I’m a professional Backend Engineer, with extensive Rust and Java experience.
At work I design, build, and deploy Rust and Spring Boot services. I’ve also done Systems work, mostly on AWS, deploying Dockerized applications on EC2, and ALB/ECS.
In my spare time I’m a Generative Artist (see my portfolio). I use Rust and GPUs to generate intricate images for canvas prints. I use Machine Learning to solve creative problems in Pytorch.
Current Projects
Tab is an intuitive, config-driven terminal multiplexer designed for software & systems engineers. Tab is designed to navigate between contexts, rather than multi-task. And designed to provide persistent historical context, rather than throwaway workspaces.
Tab is fast: tabs launch in 50ms, and reconnect in 10ms. Keyboard latency (stdin to stdout) is under 5ms.
Lifeline
github.com/austinjones/lifeline-rsLifeline is a dependency injection library for async message-based applications, written in Rust and inspired by Guice. Lifeline uses the DI pattern to reduce direct dependencies between components of an application, allowing individual components to be more easily tested, refactored, or replaced.
Rather than using Interfaces/Traits as the abstraction, Lifeline uses concrete message types. Lifeline applications define event-based, reactive tasks which wait for messages, maintain state on their stack, and transmit output messages.
Dali Renderer
github.com/austinjones/dali-rsGenerating quality images for print on canvas is suprisingly difficult. To avoid ‘pixelation’, a 20x20” canvas requires 8k x 8k resolution (or more). For large pieces (40” to 60”) you need extreme resolution.
At these resolutions, performance is critical. Dali is a GPU rendering library that leverages texture sampling & fragment shaders to generate rich texture at these resolutions. It can generate instant previews, and production renders in a few minutes.
To see it ‘in production’, see one of my works.
Education
Homeschool
2000 - 2008
I was homeschooled in the Boston area, which has an active and diverse homeschooling community. Homeschooling gave me the flexibility to study my passions: Mathematics, Music and Programming, while still providing foundation in other subjects such as History, Literature, Physics/Engineering, and Writing.
The mix of formal and self-guided work provided me with the unique ability to be highly productive in self-study. Homeschooling taught me how to choose what to learn and how to self-check my understanding.
Harvard Extension
2002 - 2007
In my early teens, I started taking Harvard Extension classes which provided a great resource for more formal learning on diverse subjects, including:
- Animal Psychology
- Constitutional Law
- Mathematics: Precalculus, Calculus, Discrete Mathematics
- Musical Composition
- Technical Writing
Experience
My first job was at the MIT Media Lab, assisting in research on human-computer interaction.
- Simplified the use of and maintained a driving simulator designed for research applications. Built software to transform XML descriptions of driving worlds into the STISIM tabular world definition format, providing the user stochastic macros to generate rich world definitions from simple input.
- Implemented tools, applications, and data analysis software to effectively measure user productivity during disruptive interruptions. Built software to read interaction logs, and aggregate ‘brand new’ statistical measures of productivity over many contexts (such as Current Window or Current Task).
At the Department of Pharmacoepidemiology, a short internship turned into my full time job for the year. Senior members of the department later founded Aetion.
- Designed and implemented applications which supported the ad-hoc analysis of pharmaceutical adverse reaction data. Using the applications, researchers were able to quickly examine statistical indicators across large numbers of drugs, and identify areas for further study.
Avadyne Health
Senior Designer
2009-2015
I joined a small startup in San Diego which saved struggling hospitals from bankruptcy. We used data analytics & workflow automation to systematically improve their financial health.
- Built an application security program from the ground up.
- Designed and built deployment pipelines for front-end, back-end, and job dispatch engines.
- Designed and built a Java-based MVC controller framework.
- Designed and built a distributed data import system optimized for real-time feeds.
I moved back to Boston and joined Aetion, a startup which delivers quality evidence about the safety and effectiveness of drug interventions.
- Developed data connectors on large datasets (100s-1000s of GB compressed).
- Managed a rapidly growing production environment on AWS, as the systems lead.
- Wrote the infrastructure for rapid development & deployment of new services (Microservice template, CloudFormation templates)
- Moved back to Java, and refactored a single-tenant Tomcat monolith into lightweight multi-tenant services.
I joined ThreatX, an application security company with an extremely innovative solution for web application & API protection.
- Accelerated feature development & web service delivery for a large Rust API application.
- Set up Postman, Github Actions, and other tools to help the team deliver great software.
A Little More About Me
When I’m not working, my interests are:
- Adventures on my Onewheel
- PC gaming
- Jazz Piano
- Cooking