Summary
Austen Talbot is a pragmatic software engineer and coach with 12 years of experience building reliable, large-scale products across consumer and enterprise domains. Currently a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI, he previously led cross-functional initiatives at Snap and Netflix, shipping features used by hundreds of thousands and improving release and testing practices across organizations. He co-founded AI-native products and led end-to-end design and engineering for real-time voice agents and LLM-driven systems, then translated that experience into a coaching practice that has mentored 30+ engineers. Austen combines product intuition with deep operational experience—revamping release processes, instituting integration testing programs, and architecting high-throughput services. His background in economics and data analysis informs a metrics-driven approach to product decisions and team productivity. Based in San Francisco, he blends startup grit with enterprise-scale delivery and a knack for turning complex systems into usable tools.
12 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
Software Engineering, Software Engineering at Hack Reactor
Bachelor of Science, Economics, Bachelor of Science, Economics at Penn State University
Study Abroad, Study Abroad at University College Dublin
German, French, Japanese