About
Hi! I’m Austin Van Braeckel. These days I’m a Software Engineer on the Nexus team at Magnet Forensics, and I love problem-solving, design, games, music, and film.
Background
At Magnet, I work on Magnet Nexus. I’m full-stack, with C# and .NET on the backend, TypeScript and React on the frontend, and AWS services like DynamoDB and Lambda, but frontend work is what I get most excited about.
I studied Software Engineering (Co-op) at the University of Guelph, with an area of application in Mathematics. Besides school and co-op, I’ve learned a lot from coding contests, hackathons, and online courses from Codecademy, freeCodeCamp, and Khan Academy.
Co-op took me to two companies and four different teams. At NCR, I spent most of my time investigating and fixing bugs in a banking transaction API, and then helped build REST APIs on a Scrum team. At Magnet Forensics, I worked on Magnet REVIEW in React and C#, and then came back for eight months on the Remote Acquire team for Magnet AXIOM Cyber. I wrote about each one under Experience, so please feel free to take a look! During school, I also worked part-time on the university’s Computing and Communications Services student team, helping people with IT issues.
Outside of work, the project I’m proudest of is still Transient, a Java platformer I made from scratch. It isn’t easy, but I strongly recommend giving it a try!
What I’m into
Problem-solving
Tracking down tricky bugs, and our annual hackathon at work. One of my hackathon projects even became a real customer-facing feature!
Mentoring
I’ve mentored our co-op students since early in my full-time career, and I love running meetings that help build a healthy, fun team.
Graphic design
I love making things look clean and polished, right down to the little details.
Video games
I love playing them, and I’ve made a couple too, including Transient right here on this site!
Music
I play guitar, and I’ve started producing my own songs too.
Manga and comics
One Piece, Naruto, Berserk, Invincible, and a whole lot more!
Watches
The little details, the clever engineering, and the history behind each design.
Film
I love watching movies and noticing how they were made. I dabble in video editing too!
Mathematics
My area of application at Guelph, and still one of my favourite subjects.
I made a song!
I’ve played guitar for a while, but I was never really into performing live. What I wanted to try was producing and recording a song myself, so I decided to learn Ableton the best way I know: by actually making something with it.
That’s how Cat In The Studio was born. It’s a fun, upbeat, not-so-serious song that I wrote, played, sang, and recorded in a single weekend. It isn’t perfect, but that was kind of the point. Time-boxing helps me with my perfectionism at work, and it meant I actually finished the song instead of tweaking it forever.
Later on, I storyboarded and directed the music video too (yes, that’s me in it). No AI was involved at any point. It’s an artisanal song made by me, for fun!
