About

Hello,

My name is Justin Austin. Welcome to the site.

I am passionate about technology that helps, whether that’s empowering people, enabling new opportunities, or correcting power disparities. I believe we have a moral imperative to ensure our technology is reliable, accessible, empathic, and as simple as the problem allows. I want technology to improve the status quo, not enforce it.

I enjoy cooking, music, hiking, poetry, and learning about the world. My interests include software engineering, artificial intelligence, ethics, policy, business, and their intersections. I love learning about the why, and I think the why is critical in everything we do.

I am especially interested in better leveraging tooling, design, and systems to improve our products, software quality, and organizations. At work, this includes topics like idea validation, architecture design, testing, mentorship, and recruiting.

Speaking of work, I’m currently a senior software engineer on the Emerging Applications Team at Kensho, where I help enable cutting-edge machine learning systems. Most of my work has been on natural language processing applications, including leading the development of a greenfield custom topic classification project. Recently, I’ve been working on improving the trustworthiness and reliability of systems backed by large language models.

I love working at the boundaries, whether it’s between technologies, teams, or disciplines.

In addition to my day job, I co-run Bear Track Lake Cabins with my mother. I hope to continue my father’s dream of sharing a unique piece of the Red River Gorge area with our guests and helping the local economy. I credit this work a lot with getting me into this industry and helping me realize the transformational ability of software—and the responsibility that comes with it.

You can find more information about my professional experience on my LinkedIn profile.

I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. I’m grateful their financial aid made a world-class education obtainable for me. I couldn’t decide between Computer Science and Philosophy, so I majored in both.

I’m now in D.C., but I grew up in the small town of Beattyville in southeastern Kentucky. I started the Appalachian Community Scholarship to give back to my school and community.

If you have any questions/comments/want to contact me, you can email me at [email protected]. This is a randomly generated forwarding address to help minimize spam. It may be deactivated and updated at any time. I’m always happy to read and reply to whatever you have to send.