Sam Cullin, BSoftEng

Engineering leader with over 8 years of experience in scaling high-performance teams and delivering cloud-native platforms, with a strong emphasis on emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. Proven track record in structuring and coaching cross-functional squads, aligning technical roadmaps with business goals, and fostering inclusive, high-trust engineering cultures. Skilled in stakeholder management, end-to-end delivery, and operating within startup timelines.

• Team Leadership: Proven ability to scale high-performing, collaborative engineering teams while aligning technical execution with company strategy and culture.
• Stakeholder & Relationship Management: Skilled in building trust and alignment across cross-functional teams, executives, and external partners to drive customer-centric delivery.
• Technical Strategy: Experienced in shaping and executing short to long term technology roadmaps that balance innovation with operational excellence.
• End-to-End Delivery: Deep expertise across the full product lifecycle—from frontend UX and accessibility to backend distributed systems and API design.
• AI & Cloud Platforms: Track record of architecting and deploying AI-powered and cloud-native platforms that deliver scalable business value.
• Data Engineering & Analytics: Proficient in designing real-time and batch data pipelines, leveraging analytics and BI tools to drive data-informed decisions.
• Infrastructure & Developer Experience: Innovative in building resilient, observable infrastructure and internal platforms that accelerate developer velocity and reliability.

FSCO Pty Ltd — Web3 & AI Fintech

Senior Software Engineer → Tech Lead

fsco.io | Brisbane, Australia | 03/2020 - 02/2025

• Built and scaled a 7-engineer full-stack team in Brisbane, defining technical and product direction while fostering a high-trust, innovative culture.
• Mediated team conflicts, mentored engineers, and introduced paired programming and code reviews, boosting collaboration and productivity.
• Managed client and partner relationships, leading blockchain integration for a food producer while aligning delivery with platform constraints and influencing partner roadmaps.
• Spearheaded platform migration to AWS + Kubernetes with event-driven architecture, cutting latency (800ms to 50ms), increasing release frequency via CI/CD, and improving stability and security through containerized testing.
• Architected Hiiro, an LLM-backed OCR engine to convert unstructured documents into structured datasets, optimizing performance and cost after evaluating cloud OCR and custom NLP pipelines.
• Led incident recovery, post-mortems, and process redesign after outages, implementing safeguards to prevent recurrence.

Telstra Corporation — Australia's National Telco

Data Analyst → Cloud Architect

telstra.com | Melbourne, Australia | 03/2018 - 03/2020

• Partnered with Telstra PM to deploy a rebate engine, embedding rebate eligibility into the front-of-house dashboard and eliminating customer wait times for eligibility confirmation.
• Designed security compliant (tfsec) infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) modules for big data platform's on-prem to AWS migration.
• Automated petabyte-scale big data workflows, shifting processing to off-peak hours, saving 2 hours/day and ensuring up-to-date dashboards every morning.
• Created a Power BI visualizer for rebate anomalies and outliers, improving visibility of outstanding rebates.

Findas Pty Ltd — Software Development Studio

Founder & Lead Developer

Melbourne, Australia | 02/2017 - 03/2021

• Founded and ran a small development company; managed hiring, client engagement, project delivery, and budgeting across multiple SaaS and mobile products, resulting in on-time delivery projects.
• Delivered Gotya, a social iOS app in swift, from concept to App Store launch within 4 weeks by coordinating a 4-developer team on an accelerated timeline.
• Designed and shipped a high-availability AWS-based eCommerce platform for an optometry client, migrating thousands of products from legacy systems.
• Led QA/UAT cycles and provided Level 3 production support to ensure reliability and rapid issue resolution.
• Built a blockchain proof-of-concept app using VeChain + React to enable POS reward redemption with smart contract validation.
• Regularly presented on Hyperledger Fabric and blockchain fundamentals at Melbourne Blockchain meetups, engaging with a diverse audience of developers and enthusiasts.

A curious, technical developer, I thrive on solving complex problems through code. With an explorer's mindset, I build using Rust, Go, and AI, focusing on clean architecture and automation. From training AI for terrain simulation to orchestrating home Kubernetes clusters, I dive into the unknown to create and learn.

Selected Projects

• AI Terrain Modeling: Built a U-Net model to generate realistic terrain from Perlin noise for simulations.
• Covert AI Agents: Simulated multi-agent systems to study covert manipulation strategies.
• Crypto Automation: Created a trading bot to manage Uniswap v3 pool liquidity.
• Rust Tooling: Developed a CLI and gRPC backend for secure environment variable management.
• Home Kubernetes Cluster: Set up home automation and media server on a self-managed K8s cluster.
• Terminal LLM CLI: Built a Golang CLI AI chatbot with terminal and file system access for developers.

When not tinkering with ESP32 home automations or playing mechanic, I'm outdoors—camping, 4WDing, or relearning rock climbing. I experiment with cooking, diving into the science of food's effects on body and mind. I also enjoy deep chats with my partner about psychology and human behavior. Whether debugging systems or exploring the human brain, I’m fascinated by what makes things tick.