A developer who started out drafting buildings. Eight years at Pro Drafting & Design — draftsman first, then quietly migrating into IT and writing the software the team now runs on. Django on the server, Flutter on the phone, Linux underneath it all.
The headline build is a Django project-management and team-communications app I made solo at Pro Drafting & Design — used by about 50 people across two firms, with billable hours, budget tracking, and PDF reporting baked in.
Alongside the day job, finishing a Bachelor of Computer Science at UQ — graduating January 2027.
On the side: a Flutter card game shipped to iOS and Android, and a Linux server at home hosting this site and a handful of other things.
Solo-built full-stack platform for architecture and design firms. Handles project tracking, team communications, billable hours, budget tracking, and PDF report generation, with passwordless magic-link auth (Resend) and Gmail OAuth. Containerised and deployed behind Nginx with Backblaze B2 for file storage.
Internal tooling that automates setup and switching between CAD packages and client configurations — making software that was never designed to interoperate work smoothly together. Used daily across the drafting team.
Solo-built cross-platform multiplayer card game, published on the App Store and Google Play.
Personal server hosting michaeloates.me and Django side projects, plus a Jellyfin media stack behind a reverse proxy and AdGuard Home for network DNS filtering. Networking, DNS, TLS, and backups all handled myself.
Design, build, and maintain internal software (Python automations and Django web apps) used daily by the drafting team. Provision and maintain the internal Windows server — WireGuard VPN, licence sharing, network shares — supporting a fully remote team. Deliver IT consulting to client firms across Microsoft 365 administration, networking, and endpoint support.
Produced detailed design plans across commercial projects in a multidisciplinary team.
Focus areas: software engineering, data science, and cloud infrastructure.