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About Me — Dr. Derek Austin 🥳
My 20-year SWE career and how I became an AI-native full-stack software engineer, fractional architect, and design engineer.
Today, I operate exclusively as an AI-Native Senior Full-Stack SWE and Fractional Architect. I help founders and VC-backed startups build deterministic, financial-grade platforms (Next.js, Node.js, Postgres) at 10x velocity.
I use my strict 5-Step Forge process with state-of-the-art, frontier LLMs (Deep Think / Claude Opus) to ship without the technical debt of “vibe coding.”
If you need a world-class software engineer and fractional architect on a part-time, async basis (US 1099/Global B2B), reach out to me via DoctorDerek.com.
My Journey from Web Dev to PT to Web Dev (Again)
You may be curious as to why a physical therapist and massage therapist is also a lead UI/UX frontend software engineer and web performance expert.
I started building websites professionally back in 2001, and I even built a PHP app for LiveJournal that earned a few hundred dollars in popup ads (that I now regret; sorry about that!).
When I got to college, I taught web development to professors (2004) and became the webmaster for…
