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Leeds, UK · working remotely

Mark Austin Senior Software Engineer

9+ years across backend and full-stack engineering, currently building and scaling production systems at Uberall.

In my spare time I run Austin Tech Solutions, building and running websites for businesses across Yorkshire and the North East.

Get in touchView my work
Mark Austin driving a Lotus Elise on track

off the clock: track days & motorsport

Mark Austin

about

Who I am

I'm a senior software engineer with 9+ years of experience, specialising in backend systems, data pipelines and API integrations. I take ambiguous problems from R&D through architecture and requirements into production.

My strongest areas are Kotlin and the JVM, AWS, APIs and data pipelines. I use Claude Code and MCP day to day for R&D, unfamiliar codebases and incident investigation, and I check what it gives me against the code and the data before I act on it. Outside work I'm into motorsport and track days.

tech & tools

Backend

  • Kotlin
  • Micronaut
  • Ktor
  • Java
  • Groovy
  • Spring Boot

Cloud and infrastructure

  • AWS
  • Kubernetes
  • Docker
  • Jenkins

Messaging

  • Kafka
  • AWS SQS

Data

  • PostgreSQL
  • MySQL
  • Databricks
  • Elasticsearch
  • Redis

Observability

  • Grafana
  • Prometheus
  • Sentry

AI

  • Claude Code
  • Claude Agent SDK
  • MCP
  • Agent Skills
  • cmux (parallel agents)

Web

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Node.js

impact

Highlights

  • 2023 – Present

    Uberall

    Tech lead on Uberall's Apple Insights pipeline, from first design to production. It processes nearly 3 million requests a day. Uberall needed Apple Business Connect insights in its analytics product, and the quick option was to build it into the monolith. I made the case for a separate service instead, with a design document, R&D findings and a revised timeline, and engineering leadership approved it. I worked alongside a tech lead from another team, presented the design to Apple's technical team, and adapted the build when Apple changed its API partway through. It went live in 2024, on time and to the original design, and Uberall was the first in its industry to integrate Apple Insights. I still own it.

    KotlinMicronautAWS+5

  • 2026

    Uberall

    I led the Apple Insights move to Apple's Business API v1. It went live ahead of Apple's deadline with no rollback. Apple is retiring the old API on 31 October 2026. The change spanned four repositories and depended on another team migrating the token side alongside us. I scoped it, wrote the migration and rollback plans, coordinated with that team and wrote the code. I sequenced the cutover so reporting kept working, and watched it for 24 hours before closing it. The move also stopped the rate-limit errors and sped up requests for our largest accounts.

    KotlinMicronautAWS+1

  • 2026

    Uberall

    I built Uberdocs, an internal AI assistant used across Uberall. It has answered nearly 1,400 questions since April, about 60 a week. It started as my entry to an internal plugin competition. It searches GitLab, Confluence and the help centre and answers Uberall questions in plain English with its sources cited, through a Slack command, a Claude Code plugin or an MCP server. It's used well beyond engineering, including to check and draft answers for customer RFPs. Because it sits in company-wide Slack, I locked down where it can run and moved every source behind an MCP server with typed tools. The model never handles credentials and has no shell or web access, so read-only is enforced rather than asked for. Every cited source gets a trust rating from its type and age, and when a document contradicts the code, Uberdocs says so and logs it, which gives us a running list of docs to fix. I track usage, cost and source health in Grafana.

    ClaudePythonMCP+5

  • 2026

    Uberall

    Meta removed metrics we depended on. I owned the response and planned 9 tickets, six of which have shipped ahead of Meta's deadline. Meta's Graph API v25 removed 10 Page and Post metrics on every API version, and because we requested metrics in batches, one removed metric failed the whole request. I wrote the R&D and took the decisions that belonged to Product to Product rather than guessing: whether to use the replacement metrics, how to handle history, and how to label the affected reports. I planned the work as 9 tickets with the dependencies mapped, and six have shipped so far, ahead of the 31 October deadline. I'd built the original Graph API integration in 2023.

    GroovyGrailsMySQL

  • 2026 – Present

    Austin Tech Solutions

    My own product, built and run under Austin Tech Solutions: one calendar for track days, test days and race meetings across five circuits. The circuits are in and near Yorkshire, and spectator access is confirmed by people who were actually there rather than guessed. A daily job pulls events from several sources into one feed, and a source that breaks is logged and skipped rather than taking the others down. Around that sit email alerts, calendar subscriptions, a community photo gallery, an embeddable calendar for clubs and circuits, and a review queue that drafts weekend posts for Facebook and Instagram through Meta's Graph API. It's live and I maintain it.

    Next.jsTypeScriptPostgreSQL+1

  • 2025

    Austin Tech Solutions

    A full rebuild for Performance Autocare, an independent Lotus specialist in Knaresborough, to mark its tenth year. Their old site didn't reflect a decade of reputation, and enquiries had nowhere reliable to land. I designed and built a new site around everything they do: a full services catalogue, a workshop tour and a live inventory of cars for sale, with enquiries going straight to their business email. Since launch I've run the hosting, deployment and security and kept the sales inventory up to date, so the team can focus on the workshop.

    Next.jsTypeScriptVercel

experience

Career

  1. Uberall

    Uberall

    visit Uberall website (opens in a new tab)

    Senior Backend Engineer

    Berlin, Germany · Remote

    Mar 2023 – Present

    Joined as Backend Engineer and promoted to Senior Backend Engineer in July 2024. Regularly act as technical lead for the Analytics & Reporting team, a distributed team of 9, driving technical planning and delivery.

    • Led the Apple Insights, Apple Business API, Meta Insights and Uberdocs work in Highlights, and own our metric deprecations, API migrations and the working relationship with Apple's API team.
    • Took the two heaviest tickets in our Databricks driver migration, upgrading a service from Java 8 to Java 21 and then swapping the driver as a separate change. Finished six weeks before the retirement deadline with no rollback.
    • As the only UK-based engineer on a team spanning the Americas and Dubai, provide early-day coverage for client-facing and system-critical issues.
    • Review design documents for other teams, interview backend candidates and built the interview tracker the team uses to share interviews out.
    • Act as the team's agile advocate: I run its ceremonies, wrote its Definition of Ready and Definition of Done, and hold us to both. I onboard new engineers and unblock teammates when they're stuck.
  2. Austin Tech Solutions

    Austin Tech Solutions

    visit Austin Tech Solutions website (opens in a new tab)

    Director

    Leeds, UK · Hybrid

    Feb 2025 – Present

    Founded and run Austin Tech Solutions in my spare time, building websites for businesses across Yorkshire and the North East and owning discovery, design, development, hosting and support.

  3. AND Digital

    AND Digital

    visit AND Digital website (opens in a new tab)

    Senior Product Developer (Senior Software Engineer & Consultant)

    Leeds, UK · Hybrid

    Jan 2019 – Mar 2023

    I joined AND Digital as an Associate Developer in January 2019 and was promoted to Product Developer in 2021 and Senior Product Developer in 2022. From 2020 to 2023 I was a senior engineer at Sky Betting & Gaming on its horse racing and greyhound betting engines, building Kotlin and Kafka services, integrating new data providers, cutting processing latency with Kotlin Flow and mentoring junior and senior engineers. Before that I worked with clients including KCOM, N Brown and MKM Building Supplies.

  4. Baker Hughes, a GE company

    Baker Hughes, a GE company

    visit Baker Hughes, a GE company website (opens in a new tab)

    EID IT Intern

    Newcastle, UK · On-site

    Jun 2016 – Jul 2017

    My industrial placement year. I built data visualisations of machine performance for the pipeline factory and worked on a recruitment showcase web app.

  5. Sheffield Hallam University

    Sheffield Hallam University

    visit Sheffield Hallam University website (opens in a new tab)

    BSc (Hons) Computer Science

    Sheffield, UK · On-site

    Graduated 2018

    I graduated with a First Class BSc (Hons) in Computer Science, with an overall mark of 83%, the second highest in my cohort.

Austin Tech Solutions

austin tech solutions

I design, build and look after websites for businesses across Yorkshire and the North East

Austin Tech Solutions is my web design business. I work with any kind of business or organisation across Yorkshire and the North East, on new websites, redesigns, SEO, hosting, ongoing maintenance and Google Business Profile management. It's one senior engineer rather than an agency, and it's built to be hands-off: you give me a brief and approve the work at a few points, and I handle the content, the launch, the hosting and everything after.

Visit Austin Tech Solutions

say hello

Contact

Whether it's a role, a project or a question, email me at mark@austintechsolutions.co.uk or use the form.

I read every message myself and reply within one working day.

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