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Austin Biggs

Staff software engineer and technical leader in Chicago. The kind who architects the system, leads the team that builds it, and mentors the people beside it.

13+ YEARS · FULL STACKTYPESCRIPT / REACT / GRAPHQLCHICAGO, IL
View the workSay hello
TYPESCRIPTLANGUAGEDOCSTyped superset of JavaScript that scales.REACTUI LIBRARYDOCSComponent model for building interfaces.GRAPHQLAPI LAYERDOCSQuery language for strongly typed APIs.NEXT.JSFRAMEWORKDOCSReact framework for the web.RUBY ON RAILSFRAMEWORKDOCSBatteries-included full-stack framework.NODE.JSRUNTIMEDOCSServer-side JavaScript runtime.POSTGRESQLDATABASEDOCSBattle-tested relational database.POSTGISGEOSPATIALDOCSSpatial queries for PostgreSQL.REDUXSTATEDOCSPredictable state container for JS apps.APOLLOGRAPHQL CLIENTDOCSCaching client and tooling for GraphQL.TAILWINDCSSDOCSUtility-first styling framework.AWSCLOUDDOCSAmazon’s cloud platform.GOOGLE CLOUDCLOUDDOCSGoogle’s cloud platform.NXMONOREPODOCSBuild system for large monorepos.CLOUDFLARE R2STORAGEDOCSZero-egress object storage.SUPABASEBACKENDDOCSPostgres-powered backend platform.JESTTESTINGDOCSJavaScript unit-testing framework.CYPRESSTESTINGDOCSEnd-to-end tests in a real browser.

Architect the system.Lead the team.Grow the people.

JOURNEY BEFORE DESTINATION
01 · THE STORY

Three acts, thirteen years.

Every act taught a different layer of the same craft: the product, the platform, the people.

ACT I · THE FOUNDER3+ YEARS

Klik Denver · Founder & Creative Director

Built a digital-marketing agency from zero: a team of seven, eighteen client projects at a 97% on-time rate, a 34% revenue climb, creative direction across nine brands. Where code first met product, revenue, and taste.

ACT II · THE PLATFORM160+ ENGINEERS

Handshake · Tech Lead, Frontend Platform

Guided architectural decisions for a platform supporting 160+ engineers. Built Rosetta, championed GraphQL at enterprise scale, and turned knowledge-sharing into infrastructure.

ACT III · THE STAFF ENGINEERNOW

Assured · Staff Engineer

Moved between an engineering-management stretch and a staff IC role. Lately: image and video infrastructure. Data pipelines, geospatial queries, CDN and object-storage architecture, zero-downtime migrations.

READ THE FULL STORY
02 · SELECTED WORK

Systems with signatures.

Built to be used hard, extended by others, and outlast their author.

R-001 · COMPONENT LIBRARY · FLAGSHIP

Rosetta

A React component library serving an entire organization: the shared visual language 160+ engineers ship with every day. The kind of platform bet that pays interest daily.

135+ COMPONENTS3 THEMES160+ ENGINEERS
PrimarySecondaryGhost
rosetta add button --theme=dark
SPECIMEN — BUTTON · INPUT · SWATCH
F-002INTERNAL TOOLING
Forms Generator

Schema-driven multi-step forms. Describe the flow, get the UI. Turned weeks of bespoke form work into configuration.

REACTSCHEMA-DRIVEN
S-003SEARCH
Search Filtering API

A state-machine-driven, headless filtering engine. Complex faceted search logic, decoupled from any single UI.

STATE MACHINESHEADLESS
C-004CRM
Candidate Hub

An employer CRM moving roughly 20% of all bulk employer messages on the platform. Built for scale, tuned for deliverability.

RAILSGRAPHQL
CR-005INDEPENDENT
Cradle

An independent product, built end-to-end: design, infrastructure, ship. Live at cradle.austinbiggs.com.

SIDE PROJECTLIVE
ST-006OPEN SOURCE
Stylit

Dead-simple style primitives for React components. Small API, no ceremony, on GitHub.

OSSREACT
+ MORE SHIPPING SOON
03 · WRITING

The index.

04 ENTRIES · FIRST POSTS SHIPPING SOON
NO.TITLEABOUTTOPIC
001Design systems that survive 160 engineersLessons from building Rosetta: API design, theming, and the politics of shared code.PLATFORMSOON
002Describe the flow, get the UIHow schema-driven form generation turned weeks of bespoke UI into configuration.ENGINEERINGSOON
003State machines make search boring, in a good wayDesigning a headless filtering API around explicit states instead of edge cases.ENGINEERINGSOON
004What founding an agency taught me about staff engineeringProduct, revenue, and taste are part of the job description.CAREERSOON
04 · LEADERSHIP & MENTORSHIP

Staff-level work is measured in other people's output.

The best systems outlive their authors. So do the best teams.

01 — PLATFORM LEADERSHIP

Tech Lead for Handshake's Frontend Platform, owning architectural direction for the surface 160+ engineers build on every day.

02 — KNOWLEDGE SHARING

Founded technical guilds and ran Lunch & Learn programs. The fastest team is the one that teaches itself.

03 — INCLUSIVE SPACES

LGBTQ+ ERG and community leader for three years, building teams where diversity of thought, background, and experience is the default.

04 — BEYOND THE ORG CHART

Served on a CEO-initiated task force spanning sales and marketing. Product and revenue are engineering concerns too.

05 · CONTACT

Say hello.

Building something at the frontier, or hiring the person who will? Reach out.

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