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Matthew
Austin

I build products, teams, and things nobody asked for.

Ten years across Apple, fintech, and early-stage startups, mostly shipping consumer products end to end. These days that means AI features people actually use, and a growing pile of side projects below.

ResumeGet in touchOpen to senior engineering & leadership roles

A decade of shipping

I started my career at Apple, where I founded a team to build a multi-channel customer messaging platform and later scaled an engineering org from 2 to 35 people supporting Apple Services like TV+ and Beats.

For the last five years I've worked in consumer fintech — first as Tech Lead for Onboarding at Hello Digit (acquired by Oportun), then as an early engineer at Hiro Financial, where I helped architect and ship an iOS and web product from nothing to roughly 3,000 users in open beta.

Most of my recent work sits at the intersection of product and LLMs: AI chat and advisory features in a live consumer app, prompt engineering and tool-use design, and an in-house eval system for A/B model comparisons and regression testing on prompt changes.

10+ years
Experience
B.S. Software Engineering
Education
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Alma mater

Things I've built

Side projects, experiments, and tools I made because I wanted them to exist.

  • 2026

    ShelterBoard

    I first built this shared dog-outing board for Pasadena Humane Society, replacing an erasable whiteboard with live status, notes, and outing history. I’ve since made it multi-shelter and am working to bring more shelters on board.

    • Next.js
    • TypeScript
    • PostgreSQL
    • Supabase
    • Vercel
  • 2026

    Rent Rush

    A real-time card game I made so a few friends can open a link, sit down at a table, and play. Collect property sets, charge rent, and steal from each other—first to three complete sets wins.

    • Expo
    • React Native
    • Fastify
    • WebSockets
    • Fly.io
  • 2026

    Friday Yahtzee

    Our families turned Friday Yahtzee into a weekly spectator sport, placing bets on whether my boyfriend or I would win. I built them a live scoreboard and picks site to make the rivalry even more fun.

    • Next.js
    • TypeScript
    • PostgreSQL
    • Drizzle
    • Vercel
  • 2026

    LAX Driveway

    Friends kept asking to leave their car with us before flights out of LAX, so I turned the two spots in our driveway into a real booking site. Pick your dates, see what’s actually open, and get a confirmation email — all for less than the overpriced airport structures.

    • Next.js
    • TypeScript
    • Drizzle
    • Neon
    • Resend
    • Vercel

Where I've worked

  1. Apr 2024 — Apr 2026

    Full-Stack Software Engineer

    Hiro Financial

    • Joined as an early engineer with no product or users; helped architect and ship the iOS and web app from scratch, growing to ~3,000 users in open beta across a 10-person startup.
    • Built AI-powered chat and financial advisory features end-to-end, including tool-use design and prompt engineering across a live consumer product.
    • Helped design and build an in-house LLM eval system used across the engineering org to run A/B model comparisons and regression testing on prompt changes, enabling safer and faster iteration on agent behavior.
    • Operated in an AI-native engineering culture, using LLMs to accelerate development, code review, and debugging — letting a 4-person team ship well beyond typical startup scale.
    • React
    • React Native
    • Python
    • Django
    • LLM Evals

  2. Feb 2021 — Apr 2024

    Senior Software Engineer, Tech Lead

    Hello Digit, acquired by Oportun

    • Led engineering for the Onboarding team; coordinating, mentoring, and growing a team of 4–6 engineers while driving continuous iteration across user registration and retention flows with zero production incidents.
    • Built a replacement in-house referral system that simplified a legacy solution previously too complex for engineering to iterate on or business teams to configure independently.
    • Identified and resolved a critical financial discrepancy involving residual balances across closed user accounts, recovering tens of thousands of dollars and mitigating compliance risk.
    • Built and scaled full-stack systems supporting onboarding and core financial workflows.
    • React Native
    • Node.js
    • Go
    • Tech Leadership

  3. Oct 2018 — Feb 2021

    Software Engineering Lead

    Apple, Media & Entertainment

    • Scaled the engineering team from 2 to 35 across backend, frontend, and infrastructure to support Apple Services (TV+, Beats).
    • Owned roadmap, hiring, and execution for internal platforms enabling operations and content workflows across multiple Apple Services businesses.
    • Led development of 5+ internal systems used by operations and business teams to manage content and workflows.
    • Managed team budget, headcount planning, and long-term technical strategy.
    • Platform
    • Hiring
    • Org Strategy

  4. Aug 2016 — Oct 2018

    Software Engineering Lead

    Apple, Conversational Engineering

    • Founded and led a new team to build a multi-channel customer messaging platform (WeChat, Apple Business Chat, web).
    • Architected and developed scalable chatbot and messaging infrastructure supporting millions of customer interactions.
    • Inventor of a patented conversational platform (US Patent #10733982).
    • Chatbots
    • Messaging
    • Patent

Let's talk

I’m always happy to talk about engineering leadership, consumer products, side projects, or where LLMs actually earn their keep. The fastest way to reach me is email.

matt.austin94@gmail.com