Marcus Belcastro

Employment & Work Experience

Senior Software Engineer

Weel • 2023 — Present

Full‑stack role focusing on product features, compliance and DevOps.
Python Django, DRF, React, Next.js, AWS, Terraform, Docker, SQL, OpenAPI, OpenAI, GraphQL, MongoDB, micro‑services.
Built customer‑facing micro‑service and internal admin panel from scratch (solo).
Migrated to new card issuer; ISO/SOC compliance lead for engineering.
Cut Dependabot vulnerabilities from 500 → 0; championing a DevOps team.
Completed AWS Developer Associate certification.

Mid‑level Software Engineer

Instawork • 2023 (6 months)

Implemented product changes to enhance business user experiences and growth.
Python Django, DRF, React, TS, Bootstrap, Hyperview, Mode, Datadog, AWS, Terraform, Docker, SQL, Celery, Salesforce, Jest, Nightwatch, OpenAPI, OpenAI.
Delivered BI pipeline from backend to Salesforce for sales insights.
Drove security initiatives: patched critical vulns and updated dependencies.

Co‑Founder & Technical Lead

Yora Settlements • 2019 — 2023 (3 years)

Co‑founded and built a cryptocurrency trading platform end‑to‑end.
Designed core backend micro‑services in Python on Linux.
Managed contractors; owned 4 REST APIs (Flask + OpenAPI), public and private.
Implemented robust security: firewalls, VPNs, scoped permissions, encryption.
Built testing across units/endpoints/performance; administered SQL hosting and AWS.
Published Python library improving transactional throughput 5×.

Co‑Founder & Technical Lead

Western Sydney Software • 2022 (1 year)

Built serverless backends in Python on AWS (S3, Lambda, SQS, SES, API GW).
Security consulting and automation solutions for clients.
Managed contractors; authored proposals and plans for tenders.

Software Developer

Western Sydney University • 2022 (6 months)

Delivered a Unity C# application with feature and unit testing.
Built a Laravel REST API with SQL backend to manage app state.
Handled Linux system administration and deployments.

Software Developer & Linux Sysadmin

MLC@Home • 2021 (6 months)

Contributed to ML validity research using distributed HPC.
Improved C++ training code; hardened and optimized Python orchestration code.
Managed SQL/MongoDB and published an on‑disk radix tree validation lib.

Qualifications & Education

AWS Certified Developer — Associate

Completed in 2024

Bachelor of Computer Science (Advanced) with Distinction

Western Sydney University • 2019 — 2021

Major in Cyber Security • GPA 6.7/7 • ACS Accredited Professional.

Higher School Certificate

Wyndham College • 2017 — 2018

Band 6 student; completed university‑level Physics 1 via WSU Access Program.

A bit about me

I’m a full‑stack software engineer. I started tinkering with code as a teenager on a Raspberry Pi blinking LEDs with Python, and I’ve been hooked since. I enjoy working across Python, React/Next.js, and AWS with a strong interest in infrastructure and DevOps. I love product models where engineers own features end‑to‑end—from design and implementation to deployment, monitoring, and maintenance—optimizing for fast learning and high impact.

I thrive on diving into obscure bugs and incidents, tracing through code and cloud infra to find root causes and learn something new along the way. I’m drawn to interesting products and challenging problem spaces.