Marcus Belcastro

Employment & Work Experience

Senior Software Engineer

Weel • 2023 — Present

Full‑stack role in financial technology focusing on product features, compliance and DevOps/SRE.
I started as a mid-level engineer, was promoted to senior, then to head of DevOps. I've also been apart of every engineering team in the org.
Python Django, DRF, React, React Native, Next.js, AWS, Terraform, Docker, SQL, OpenAPI, OpenAI, GraphQL, MongoDB, micro‑services.
Solo greenfields implementations: Customer facing micro-service, internal admin panel used by whole business
Solo projects: Lead of vibe-coder implementations, ISO/SOC engineering lead, Single pane-of-glass observability
Ensured compliance with ISO and SOC from the engineering function ahead of schedule.
Cut Dependabot vulnerabilities from 500 → 0; Leading the DevOps team.
Led multiple major migrations and upgrades of software libraries like React, React Native, Django, etc

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, but I've always been fascinated by computers ever since I was about 12 when my dad bought our first family personal computer. I very much have a love for infrastructure, especially commercial grade stuff, including cloud providers like AWS. The understanding of how code is shipped, executed, and gets to people is more interesting to me than the code itself.

I thrive on a good mystery, something that is fresh, something I've never seen before. I want to be working on new things, not fixing the same problem that's had its SLA bumped 10 times now. This also extends to the industry I'm working in too. I want to work somewhere where we are breaking new ground every day!

A little bit about myself personally, I love nature and the outdoors, and activities that push my physical and mental limits. I also like to describe my personality as quite scientific. I demand precision and the scientific method in almost everything that I do and work with, but strive for creativity and fluidity when working with other people. If you want to learn a little more about me, I highlhy recommend you check out my dev site linked below!