jackson hirst

Cloud & full-stack engineer — Australia · Open to senior roles

Builds like an engineer.
Thinks like a founder.

I'm Jackson Hirst. I've shipped supply-chain systems used by government stakeholders, run a working farm, and founded an ag-tech startup — so I write code with the P&L in the room.

Scroll
30k
monthly users on an app I updated solo to prevent a store takedown
10k+
items traced through a supply-chain PWA I led end-to-end
40%
cut from total cloud spend by redesigning one log pipeline
2
degrees — finance and computer science, University of Sydney

Selected work

Fewer projects, deeper proof.

Also built:HirstAg — Marketing site for the family farming operationRachelle Hirst — Site for an elite equestrian rider and horse breeder

The long way round

From the farm, to the cloud, and back.

Most engineering careers are a straight line. Mine took a detour through running a real business — and that detour is exactly why I'm better at the job now.

  1. 2018

    University of Sydney, twice over

    Double degree — Bachelor of Commerce (Finance) and Bachelor of Advanced Computing (Computer Science) — on the E12 and David W. Johnson scholarships. Capstone client lead for Strong Compute (later Y Combinator), building a QR-detection model alongside Stanford researchers. Mentored first-year programming and OOP.

  2. 2021

    Curbcycle — data engineering intern

    Built AWS Glue ETL pipelines that went to production. Found and fixed a cloud cost overrun by redesigning the log pipeline — cutting total cloud spend by 40%. Hired full-time the moment the internship ended.

  3. 2022

    Curbcycle — cloud engineer

    Led development of a provenance-tracking PWA used to trace 10,000+ items through the supply chain. Independently shipped updates to a React Native app with 30k monthly users. Designed the company data warehouse on Redshift and Glue, and secure QuickSight dashboards consumed by government stakeholders.

  4. 2023

    The family business

    Stepped in to run the family farming operation — while continuing to contract for Curbcycle. Ran it like an engineer: systematised operations, built the software the farm needed, and learned what P&L pressure does to your definition of 'shipped'.

  5. 2024

    Edgible

    Co-founded Edgible — self-hosted private AI, live at edgible.com — and took it through the ThincSeed accelerator at the University of Adelaide's ThincLab. Sole engineer, building the product from first commit to production.

  6. Now

    Back to the industry

    Looking for a senior engineering role where the business context isn't a distraction from the code — it's the point.

How I work

Cut through complexity

Inefficient process genuinely annoys me. I look for the elegant solution — the one that removes work rather than adding layers.

Tooling as a discipline

A tuned Neovim and Linux setup, workflows continually rebuilt around AI — with the review habits to keep quality and maintainability non-negotiable.

Outcomes over output

Years of P&L responsibility mean I frame every technical decision as a business decision. Code that doesn't move an outcome is inventory.

Contact

Hiring a senior engineer who's run the numbers?