Austin Lord
Senior Software Engineer
Hi! 👋
I've spent 16+ years building and scaling software systems. I'm currently a Senior Software Engineer at Meta, building systems that manage and visualize the company's global network infrastructure. I spent a decade at Indiana University, culminating as Director of Digital Campus, where I oversaw the university's core websites, mobile app, and design system used across the enterprise.
I build durable platforms and internal tools that operate in complex environments, from design systems adopted across organizations to software supporting large-scale infrastructure operations. I work across the stack, primarily in React and TypeScript on the frontend, and PHP, Python, Rust, and Node.js on the backend.
Recently, my work has focused on navigating the shift to AI-assisted and agentic workflows, understanding where they accelerate teams, and where they introduce new failure modes.
Portfolio
Here are selected projects from across my career, where I've designed, built, and improved systems as both an individual contributor and a technical leader.
LayerZ
LayerZ is a contract and asset management platform tracking Meta’s global network infrastructure agreements, including contracts valued at $100M+.
Glassworks
Glassworks is a GIS and network inventory platform that manages the physical and geographic data of Meta’s global infrastructure.
Appify
Appify is a low-code platform at Meta that enables engineers to rapidly build and deploy internal applications with minimal effort.
Orison
Orison is a telehealth platform connecting patients nationwide with licensed providers for testing, results, and follow-up care.
Rivet Design System
Rivet is a design system that standardizes and unifies Indiana University’s digital interfaces across applications and platforms.
IU Mobile
The IU Mobile app provides students with centralized access to essential university tools, services, and information.
IU COVID-19 hub
IU’s COVID-19 platform served as a central hub for pandemic information across nine campuses and 90,000+ students, faculty, and staff.
IU.edu
IU.edu is the university’s primary gateway, providing a central hub for information for prospective students and their families.
IU Developer Portal
Developers.iu.edu is a centralized resource hub that improves onboarding and productivity for developers across Indiana University.
UITS website
The UITS website connects users across Indiana University to essential IT services and support resources.
Status.IU portal
Status.IU is a system status platform that communicates outages and maintenance, reducing support load across university systems.
Resumé
Summary
Senior Software Engineer with 16+ years of experience. I design and ship platforms that become institutional infrastructure, from open-source design systems used across hundreds of applications to internal tools that power Meta's global network operations.
Experience
Senior Software Engineer III · Meta (via Route 36) · Remote
Jan 2023 – Present
- Architect and extend full-stack platforms in TypeScript, PHP, and Python that underpin Meta's global network infrastructure, used daily by hundreds of employees across network investments, planning, legal, and finance.
- Reduce page load times by 60% on high-traffic table views by re-architecting query patterns and optimizing backend hooks, directly improving usability for teams managing complex inventory datasets.
- Build and maintain contract management tooling for network agreements valued at $100M+, contributing significant feature work and reliability improvements to inherited systems.
- Own on-call responsibilities spanning data pipelines, infrastructure services, and application layers, triaging production issues and shipping fixes in coordination with internal stakeholders.
Senior Software Engineer · Rume Health · Remote
May 2022 – Dec 2022
- Joined during peak pandemic-era telehealth demand to re-architect a distributed platform. Consolidated dozens of standalone AWS Lambda functions into a unified Python Chalice service backed by PostgreSQL, with integrations across EMR systems and Twilio.
Director of Digital Campus · Indiana University · Bloomington, IN
Jul 2019 – May 2022
- Architected and launched covid.iu.edu within days of the pandemic's onset, building the university's central information platform serving 90,000+ students, faculty, and staff across nine campuses with a custom dashboard tracking daily case counts and isolation housing capacity in near real-time.
- Sustained rapid, near-daily iteration on the platform for over a year as pandemic policy evolved, coordinating across university leadership, public health officials, and engineering staff to keep critical information accurate and accessible under pressure.
- Directed the design and development of Rivet v2, Indiana University's open-source design system (rivet.iu.edu), expanding its capabilities to support websites, applications, and email templates with improved consistency and developer experience across the institution.
- Managed and mentored a team of engineers while driving adoption of shared standards, component libraries, and development processes across distributed product teams.
Lead User Experience Engineer · Indiana University · Bloomington, IN
Nov 2016 – Jul 2019
- Created Rivet, one of the first open-source design systems in higher education (GitHub · npm), a component library adopted by dozens of teams and deployed across hundreds of websites and applications serving multiple campuses.
- Led a team of User Experience Engineers building shared tooling, institutional interfaces, and security-focused platforms, establishing patterns that enabled independent product teams to ship consistent, accessible experiences.
- Grew Rivet's visibility through features at multiple higher education technology conferences, contributing to broader adoption of design system practices in institutional settings.
Senior Web Developer · Indiana University · Remote
Oct 2011 – Nov 2016
- Founded the development team within the Office of the Vice President for IT, growing it from a solo role to a four-engineer group that eventually became the university's UX engineering office, while delivering Indiana University's first responsive, search-driven platforms for IT service delivery.
Skills
Systems & Architecture: Distributed systems, API design, data pipelines, system integration, platform reliability
Languages: TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, PHP, Hack, Rust, SQL, GraphQL
Frontend: React, Angular, Vue, Next.js, HTML, CSS/SASS, Tailwind, Design Systems (authored)
Backend: Node.js, Serverless (AWS Lambda, Chalice), Laravel, legacy system modernization
Cloud & Infrastructure: AWS (Lambda, S3, RDS), CI/CD pipeline design, custom deployment and infrastructure tooling
Education
Master of Science · Indiana University · Bloomington, IN · 2010
Bachelor of Arts · Indiana University · Bloomington, IN · 2007
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