Austen Holmberg

Backend Engineer

9 years experience building critical site architecture and cloud solutions

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Things I've worked on

Project 1

Mount Hermon

1 year 6 months

Django, Docker, AWS

  • Worked closely with a systems administrator to troubleshoot and resolve issues in legacy Django code.
  • Diagnosed and fixed critical backend issues affecting camp itineraries and activity registration.
  • Set up staging and local development environments using AWS and Docker to streamline testing and deployment.
  • Managed and updated a deprecated itinerary system, ensuring continued stability.
Project 2

Legion.co Brand Site

3 months

Django, AWS

Created independently from the ground up using Django-CMS and AWS (based on an existing wordpress website).
Project 3

Gradient.io

4 years

Django, Postgres, GCP, GraphQL, Docker

  • Maintained and optimized a suite of data analytics products used by major clients like Walmart, Lego, and L’Oréal.
  • Improved backend performance in large queries, cutting page load times from 6–12s to ~150ms, and developed GraphQL API endpoints.
  • Built admin tools, overhauled core systems (subscriptions, Auth0, permissions), and enhanced workflow efficiency.
  • Developed large-scale web scrapers, managed terabytes of data, and designed metadata schemas for ML integration.

Honorable mentions

Open Data PDX

Portland Bureau of Sustainability

  • Led a team of junior developers in planning and developing a Django site + rest API for cataloging standardized environmental data, using incremental waterfall.
  • Defined project scope, elicited requirements, delegated work and tracked team progress.
  • Navigated miscommunications with client. Final result exceeded expectations.

News Research Survey

Stanford Economics

  • Collaborated with researchers to overhaul a survey system with tens of thousands of participants.
  • Implemented dynamic features adhering to strict requirements of the research, such as modifying the flow of the survey based on user groupings and randomization.
  • Ensured application performance and stability as waves of participants joined in.

Marketing Automation Tools

Parthenon Software

  • Built a suite of tools for web scraping and marketing automation with Cron, working closely with a project manager.
  • Built a Flask + chart.js app for human-friendly monitoring of script activity.

Side Projects

Curiosity Timelapse Generator

Tool for easily scraping batches of time-period filtered images taken by the Curiosity rover. Generates MP4 timelapses using FFMPEG and PIL

GameFootageTX

A media hosting and distribution site for videographers (work in progress)

Dithering & Color Palette Generators

Yada yada yada

Docker Compose Builder

A Ninite inspired SPA for easily customizing Python based Docker Compose stacks (work in progress)

Get in Touch

About Me

Programming has been a hobby of mine since the age of 13, starting first with Java and C++ before expanding into Python during a high school internship. There, I gained hands-on experience with web applications and Linux, which led me to specialize in backend engineering. Throughout college I worked as a freelance developer, building and maintaining Django and Flask applications (usually with AWS).

After earning my degree in 2019, I joined Criteo, where I spent several years working on large-scale Django applications and big data technologies using Python and Google Cloud Platform.

On the side I enjoy building hobby websites and cloud computing automation as much as tinkering with computer science fundamentals, such as image processing algorithms with Numpy and PIL, graphics engines in C++, and neural networks.

As of 2025 I'm looking for my next work opportunity.

Skills

  • Python, Java, C++
  • Django/Flask/FastAPI
  • Database & ORMs

Tools

  • GCP, AWS
  • Linux
  • Docker