Aternex.
The software workshopAbout

Austin Lippert / Founder & engineer

A curious mind.
A practical streak.
In your corner.

I’m Austin. I turn complicated business problems into software people can actually use. I’ve been doing it since 2003, and I still love the moment the pieces click.

Austin Lippert portraitIndependent by choice.
Accountable by name.
Hiring? View my engineering profile ↗
Austin leading a collaborative meeting in a technology office
Good software starts with understanding each other.

The person behind Aternex

Comfortable with
the complicated.

Based in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Working with teams across the US.

I am Austin Lippert, a self-taught software engineer in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the owner of Aternex LLC. I have been putting software into production since 2003, building new products and improving the systems people depend on.

I take a vague problem and turn it into working software, whether that means building from nothing or improving code that has grown hard to change. Improving code is the part I enjoy most.

At InEight, I led the move from TFS to Git with pull-request review. I work in the team's repositories, tools and review process, so the people maintaining the system can review and carry the work forward.

I use AI agents every day, and while they make me faster, the judgment stays mine: every change goes through tests and review before it ships.

Learn the business. Then build the software.

Different environments.
The same curiosity.

Telecom. Healthcare. Payments. Manufacturing. Nuclear services. Lending. Property management. Logistics.

Austin discussing operations while walking through a factory

Start where the work happens.

Manufacturing, nuclear services, logistics: the system makes more sense when you understand the people and processes around it.

Austin reviewing a tablet with a warehouse operations colleague

Follow the data to the decision.

From incoming records to the dispatch desk, I care about getting useful information to the person who needs it.

Austin working in a small home office
The quiet work behind the working software.

One engineer. Close to the details.

Big-picture thinking.
Sleeves-rolled-up work.

You work directly with me: the person who hears the problem, asks the questions, writes the code, and helps get it running.

AI is part of my daily toolkit. The judgment, testing, review, and responsibility stay with me. How tools touch your data is agreed before the work begins.

Here’s how we’ll work together ↗

What you can expect

Care, in the details.

A few habits that follow me into every project.

01

I measure what I claim

Every headline result on this site links to how it was measured, when, over what scope, and what it does not prove. Figures from earlier roles that have no proof page are my own account of that work.

02

Whatever the team runs

.NET is my default, but I work in the stack you already have and move it toward the current long-term support release.

03

Fix the cause

When a system is slow, I find what dominates the time and remove it in code before anyone reaches for more hardware.

04

Every industry runs on its data

Data is where business software lives or dies. I have worked with it in telecom, healthcare, payments, manufacturing, nuclear services, lending, property management and logistics, and I enjoy learning how each industry handles its own data and its own rules.

05

Leave it easier to change

The work is done when the next person can change the code safely, with tests that tell them when they have broken something.

06

Your data, agreed per project

I use AI agents every day, and how they touch your data is agreed per project. Claude and Codex work on code and tasks that involve no private data. When data has to stay private, I run agents through zero-data-retention endpoints, where the provider keeps nothing, or on models that run entirely on local hardware, where it never leaves the machine.

The experience behind the work

A career in
making things useful.

Take the resume with you

2025 to 2026 / Contract

TeamHealth

Contract: clinical analytics dashboard

Built a clinical analytics dashboard over HL7 messages fed from Oracle through InterSystems IRIS into SQL Server

Related evidence and limits ↗

2014 to 2018 / Full-time

Ministry Brands

Full-time: payment gateway

Joined as employee number seven and built the payment gateway from scratch

Related evidence and limits ↗
Explore the full career history2003–present · 12 roles
2026ResultstackContract: data platform and test rescueContract
  • Built a logistics warehouse and pipeline from scratch
  • Cut the pipeline cycle from 11 to 16 minutes to under 20 seconds
  • Restructured a dispatch engine and raised repo code health from 7.91 to 9.53

Linked results include measurement details and scope.

2025 to 2026TeamHealthContract: clinical analytics dashboardContract
  • Built a clinical analytics dashboard over HL7 messages fed from Oracle through InterSystems IRIS into SQL Server
  • Showed clinical metrics with no patient details, behind role-based access

Linked results include measurement details and scope.

2022 to nowAternex LLCOwnerOwner
  • Contract engagements for MedSuite, InEight, BlueModus and Optu from 2022 to 2024
  • Led the move from TFS to Git with pull-request review at InEight, making deployments 60% faster
  • Raised client sites' Lighthouse scores at BlueModus from the 70s to the low 90s

Austin’s account of the role; no public measurement source.

2021 to 2022InhabitIQFull-time: AWS modernization and CI/CDFull-time
  • Moved four legacy processes to cloud-native services: more than 90% less runtime for the same work and 85% lower cloud cost
  • Took the largest cost, database hosting, from about $6,000 to $55 a month
  • Tuned CI/CD pipelines with unit tests in every build, cutting deployment time 60% and deployment errors to zero

Austin’s account of the role; no public measurement source.

2019 to 2021Check Into CashFull-time: lending applicationFull-time
  • Built a customer-facing lending application that lifted loan conversion 40% and cut application completion time 81.25%

Austin’s account of the role; no public measurement source.

2018 to 2019TouchPoint SoftwareFull-time: cloud build and test agents, ETL across platformsFull-time

Full-time: cloud build and test agents, ETL across platforms

Austin’s account of the role; no public measurement source.

2014 to 2018Ministry BrandsFull-time: payment gatewayFull-time
  • Joined as employee number seven and built the payment gateway from scratch
  • The gateway became its own business, Payment Brands, serving 90+ brands

Linked results include measurement details and scope.

2013 to 2014ATC NuclearFull-time: services and APIs collecting data from plant hardwareFull-time

Full-time: services and APIs collecting data from plant hardware

Austin’s account of the role; no public measurement source.

2011 to 2012TransCardFull-time: payments and fraudFull-time
  • Added real-time fraud analytics; the framework cut fraud damages by 60%

Austin’s account of the role; no public measurement source.

2010 to 2012CSS ManufacturingFull-time, then retained to finish the work alongside TransCardFull-time

Full-time, then retained to finish the work alongside TransCard

Austin’s account of the role; no public measurement source.

2007 to 2010TeamHealthFull-time: data and reportingFull-time
  • Built a quick screen that merged 16 screens into one and popped each caller's greeting, cutting average handle time from 140 to 65 seconds and training from a month to half a day
  • Replaced seven days of hand-keying a 5,000-call outbound list with an import that takes under five minutes

Linked results include measurement details and scope.

2003 to 2007ComcastFull-time: first development roleFull-time
  • Replicated Oracle data to SQL Server
  • Replaced printed weekly and monthly AS/400 reports, retyped into Excel by hand, with a real-time reporting website, agent commissions included
  • Built an outage ticketing system for the 6 regions the call center served

Austin’s account of the role; no public measurement source.

Tools, chosen for the job

Whatever the
team runs.

All of it shipped in production; whatever the team runs, I move it toward the current LTS.

Languages
C# · Python · TypeScript · JavaScript · SQL
Backend
.NET (any version) · ASP.NET Web API · Entity Framework · microservices · Node.js · Express · Windows services · Azure Functions · AWS Lambda
Front end
Blazor · Vue 3 · React · Next.js · Angular · Tailwind · component libraries
Data
PostgreSQL · SQL Server · Snowflake · MongoDB · Redis · ETL/ELT · CDC · index tuning · warehousing
Cloud & DevOps
Azure · AWS · Docker · CI/CD · Azure DevOps · GitHub · Jenkins
Quality & tooling
TDD · SOLID · DDD · code-health tooling · dependency and CVE remediation in CI · Vitest · Jest · Playwright · xUnit · NUnit · agentic development

A conversation is a good place to start

Let’s find the useful thing to build.

Tell me what your business does, what is getting in the way, and what you would like to make possible.

Talk it throughBook a conversationSend a project note

I reply within two business days.