MICHAEL PEPPING
Senior full stack engineer · technical lead

I build the web with care.

I'm Michael, a senior full stack engineer and technical lead in Brisbane, Australia. Over a decade building product platforms in Ruby, TypeScript, and Python. Currently leading engineering on Mosaica, an agentic AI platform for cultural market-fit analysis.

Open to:
IC roles · Forward-deployed engineering · Product engineering · Full stack · Hands-on technical leadership
Based in:
Brisbane, Australia
Work style:
Hybrid preferred · Open to remote and on-site
Email me LinkedIn (opens in new tab)GitHub (opens in new tab)
  • Over a decade
  • Technical Lead
  • Agentic AI in production
  • Cultural Atlas: 30–35k MAU

Selected projects

Things I've helped make.

01
Agentic AI platform for cultural market fit

Mosaica (opens in new tab)

Role
Technical Lead, Jul 2025 to now. Own architecture, delivery, and technical direction. Designed and built the scanning pipeline that analyses PDFs, images, websites, and video, plus bespoke evaluation tooling to measure the quality of AI output.
What it does
Assesses how content will land with defined audience segments and turns researched insights into practical guidance for tailoring messages.
Stack
Ruby, TypeScript, Python (LangChain, FastAPI, Celery), Pinecone, Azure (Storage, Compute), Stripe, Clerk.
Agentic AIMultimodal analysisMarket-fit intelligence
02
Cultural research and learning platform (formerly SBS Cultural Atlas)

Cultural Atlas (opens in new tab)

Role
Web Developer, then Senior Full Stack and Technical Lead, 2019 to now, across International Education Services, Incluude, and Mosaica. Maintained and extended the platform, and built the scalable rollout and CI/CD pipeline, including content management.
What it does
Research and learning content on cultures worldwide.
Impact
Serves approximately 30,000–35,000 monthly active users (MAU).
How content ships
Editors publish in Sanity, webhooks trigger a rebuild and deploy on Netlify, and content goes live without developer involvement.
Stack
Astro, JavaScript, Sanity (headless CMS), Netlify, Ruby API, webhooks and build triggers.
Research platformContent systemsLong-term product work
03
Online inclusion training produced with SBS

Inclusion Program (opens in new tab)

Role
Individual contributor on the organisation portal and course viewer.
What it does
Delivers inclusion training courses to organisations through a portal and course viewer.
Impact
At the time of writing, the Inclusion Program Platform serves over 40,000 users. Delivered in partnership with SBS, a national broadcaster.
Stack
Ruby on Rails, React, Sass, MySQL, Azure (Storage, Compute), Stripe
Learning platformPortal engineeringCourse delivery
04
Former product

Incluude

Role
Former Mosaica product.
What it does
An online library of inclusion research for researchers, DEI professionals, and the wider community. The work combined content, search, product, and platform concerns.
Former productResearch librarySearch experience

What I do

Useful at every layer.

From interface to infrastructure, I like understanding how the whole system behaves.

01

Build the product

Frontend interfaces, backend services, APIs, data models, and the connective tissue that makes a product feel coherent.

02

Make it dependable

Deployment, infrastructure, testing, observability-minded practices, databases, and a practical approach to security.

03

Move the work forward

Technical direction, product context, clear communication, and the willingness to stay close to the implementation.

04

AI-enabled development

Responsible AI-enabled development where it improves exploration, delivery, and quality without replacing judgement.

Technical skills

The tools behind the work.

Hands-on across the product surface, with particular interest in dependable systems and useful technology.

Languages

Ruby, TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, SQL

Backend

Ruby on Rails, FastAPI, Celery, REST APIs, webhooks

Frontend

React, Astro, Sass, HTML, CSS

AI

LangChain, LLM integration, multimodal analysis (PDF, image, web, video), agentic workflows, vector search (Pinecone), LLM evaluation tooling

Data and CMS

MySQL, Pinecone, Sanity (headless CMS)

Cloud and DevOps

Azure (Storage, Compute), Netlify, CI/CD, scalable rollout pipelines

Integrations

Stripe (billing), Clerk (authentication)

Leadership

Architecture, technical direction, delivery, mentoring, stakeholder communication

Experience

A long view of the work.

Experience across software, digital strategy, and product development.

Jul 2025 — now

Technical Lead

Mosaica

  • Own architecture, delivery, and technical direction for an agentic AI platform in production.
  • Designed and built the multimodal scanning pipeline analysing PDFs, images, websites, and video (Python, LangChain, FastAPI, Celery).
  • Built bespoke evaluation tooling to measure AI output quality.
Mar 2021 — Jul 2025

Senior Full Stack Engineer

Mosaica

  • Individual contributor on the Inclusion Program portal and course viewer for SBS (Rails, React, Azure).
  • Maintained Cultural Atlas (30–35k MAU) and built its CI/CD and content delivery pipeline (Astro, Sanity, Netlify).
Aug 2019 — Mar 2021

Web Developer

International Education Services

  • Web development for digital products and the Cultural Atlas ecosystem.
Jan 2014 — Aug 2019

Business & Digital Strategy Manager

Bells Property Services

  • Business systems, digital operations, and strategy across a growing services business.
Feb 2012 — Dec 2013

Business Systems Software Developer

Runge ICT Group

  • Consulting, planning, project management, and software development for client projects.
Sep 2011 — Feb 2012

Games Programmer

Bifrost Studios

  • Designed, developed, and shipped Photon for iOS and Android in a small multidisciplinary team.

Open source & side projects

Curious by default.

Open-source contributions

grape-jwt-authentication (Ruby)grape-jwt-authentication (opens in new tab)

Open-source contribution: improved documentation for a JWT authentication concern used in Grape APIs.

standard-webhooks (Go)standard-webhooks (opens in new tab)

Open-source contribution: corrected the Go library import path in the README.

Side projects

daily-goggles (Go)daily-goggles (opens in new tab)

Terminal checklist CLI built to learn Go.

vampire-hunter-gb (C)vampire-hunter-gb (opens in new tab)

Endless shooter for the original Game Boy, built under real hardware constraints.

View all public work on GitHub (opens in new tab)

Contact

Have a good problem?

Looking for a full stack engineer or technical lead? Tell me what you're building and what's difficult about it. I'm interested in thoughtful products with real users and meaningful constraints.

Open toIC roles · Forward-deployed engineering · Product engineering · Hands-on technical leadership
Work styleHybrid preferred · Open to remote and on-site
Emailmikepepping@gmail.com
LinkedIn (opens in new tab)GitHub (opens in new tab)

Based in: Brisbane, Australia