Currently building aitrips.io, Jotcal & TribeRide

Shipping AI products - and the platforms behind them.

Melbourne-based engineer and technical leader. 20 years shipping web platforms across healthcare, fintech and proptech - and lately, AI products I design, build and ship myself, and AI-assisted delivery embedded across the team I lead.

20
Years shipping
37
MCP tools in production
4
Products built solo
Team-wide
AI-assisted delivery
// how I work

Where I spend my time

Most AI work stalls between a demo that impresses and a system people actually depend on. Closing that gap is architecture, evaluation, cost, latency and a lot of unglamorous production work. It's the part I find interesting.

Building

From idea to production

Taking AI products from idea to live, with the platform underneath them - data model, auth, infrastructure, evaluation and cost control. I make the architecture calls and I write the code.

Enabling

Making AI stick in a team

Embedding AI-assisted development into how an engineering team already works - shared Claude Code skills and agents, and MCP servers for the tools people already use - so the gains belong to the whole team, not one enthusiast.

Deciding

Architecture & trade-offs

Build-vs-buy, model and vendor choice, and where the effort is worth spending. Most of it comes down to knowing what breaks at scale and what quietly costs a fortune.

// products

Products I design, build and ship

I own these end to end - architecture, delivery, and the maintenance afterwards. Most are AI-native, with MCP and LLM integration designed in from the start.

aitrips.io

Live

A map-first trip planner built as the companion an AI assistant needs. Plan by talking to Claude or ChatGPT, and the product holds what assistants are bad at - durable state, spatial reasoning, collaborators, offline travel mode. 37 MCP tools in production, and a web UI that's equally capable on its own.

MCP server in productionLLM integrationReal-time collaboration
aitrips.io →

Jotcal

Live

A writable family calendar for the kitchen wall. Handwrite "soccer Thu 5pm" onto a 13" e-ink panel and it becomes a real, synced event. Native iOS and Android from one design system - the calendar you glance at, not one you scroll through.

Native iOS & AndroidHandwriting recognitionE-ink

TribeRide

In development

Native iOS group ridesharing for the people you actually know - families, friends, schools, work pods and small communities coordinating rides among themselves instead of hailing strangers. The wedge: flight-aware airport pickup that auto-fills pickup time and terminal from the real flight arrival. CarPlay surface for active rides.

Native iOSCarPlayFlight-aware pickup
coming soon

Next Departure

Open source

Real-time public transport departure board for e-ink displays. High-contrast UI tuned for Kindle, with geolocation, multi-stop views and a provider pattern for extensible transit support.

Real-time transit dataE-inkExtensible providers
GitHub →
// about

Hands-on leadership that grows with the company

I've progressively taken on more architectural and leadership scope throughout my career - from owning frontend architecture at Oneview Healthcare and Linkly, to leading a technical team at Cohort Go, to now owning full platform architecture and running a cross-functional engineering group at Urban Rest.

Recent work centres on full-stack platform builds on AWS (Lambda, ECS Fargate, RDS/PostgreSQL), React/Next.js frontends, React Native apps, and standing up CI/CD and DevOps practice. I run SCRUM end to end, lead local and offshore engineers, and make the architecture and trade-off calls that come with being the most senior technical person in the room.

I build with AI tools in both production and personal projects - Claude, Claude Code, MCP and direct API integrations - to ship features and automate the development workflow itself. I care about clear code, things that actually work, and not overcomplicating what doesn't need it.

Full-stack platform architecture

AWS CDK v2, ECS Fargate, Lambda, RDS/PostgreSQL, SQS/SNS - end to end.

Cross-functional leadership

Local & offshore engineers, contractors and agencies, with end-to-end SCRUM ownership.

AI-native development

Claude Code, MCP servers, custom agents & skills, LLM integration in production.

// experience

Where I've led & shipped

Lead Developer

Aug 2025 - Present
Urban Rest

Accommodation platform with furnished apartments across Australia, New Zealand and the UK, serving corporate clients as well as holiday travellers. Architected and grew a Lambda-based Guesty/Salesforce integration into a full platform with its own data store and API layer. I own architecture across three repos - backend monorepo, Next.js web app, and React Native mobile - on AWS CDK v2 (ECS Fargate, RDS/PostgreSQL, SQS/SNS, GitHub Actions CI/CD). Built an LLM triage pipeline for production errors and an admin dashboard for workflows nobody could previously see into. Now building a real-time data platform, Tableau BI, a smart-lock system, and native iOS & Android apps. Rolled out a guest check-in kiosk running in a hotel lobby, and run SCRUM end to end while embedding AI-assisted workflows (Claude Code, custom agents, skills and MCP) across the team.

AWS CDK v2ECS FargateReact NativeNext.jsPlatform Architecture

ReactJS Subject Matter Expert

Jul 2021 - Jun 2025
Oneview Healthcare · Healthcare Tech

Led React.js frontend modernisation for a global healthcare platform serving hospitals worldwide. Architected microfrontend systems that let teams scale and deploy independently, and drove performance work keeping critical clinical workflows sub-second. Ran the accessibility community of practice and wrote coding standards adopted across teams.

React ArchitectureMicrofrontendsAccessibilityCoding Standards

ReactJS Subject Matter Expert

Apr 2020 - Jun 2021
Linkly · Payment Systems

Led UX transformation of a mission-critical payment platform serving Commonwealth Bank, Mastercard and JB Hi-Fi. Established React architecture patterns and development standards for the payment platform's frontend.

Tier-1 ClientsPayments UIReact Standards

Technical Lead

Jul 2018 - Mar 2020
Cohort Go · EdTech

Led the technical team delivering multi-currency payment services for international education, integrating third-party payment providers. Worked with the CTO on payment-system architecture, ran Agile delivery and mentored junior developers.

Team LeadershipMulti-CurrencyAgile/Scrum
// selected architecture

A few builds I'm proud of

Queensland Police Service

QLiTE Mobile Platform

Mission-critical iOS app giving officers mobile access to core policing systems in the field.

→ State-wide deployment
Property Management

Console Cloud SaaS

Multi-tenant property management SaaS with a complete trust-accounting system and a GraphQL API.

→ Test-driven throughout
Urban Rest

AI Production Triage

Sentry and CloudWatch issues are deduplicated in n8n, then an LLM works out the likely root cause and severity.

→ Routed to Jira, Slack or PagerDuty
Own products

Issue-to-PR Agent Pipeline

A labelled GitHub issue is planned, built and tested by Claude agents in isolated containers, then checked by a review panel before a PR opens. The agents never hold write access.

→ Opening PRs on my own products
// stack

Tools I reach for

React / Next.js React Native TypeScript Node.js .NET GraphQL AWS CDK v2 ECS Fargate Lambda RDS / PostgreSQL SQS / SNS GitHub Actions Claude Code MCP AI / LLM Integration
// contact

Let's build something good

I lead engineering teams, ship full-stack platforms end to end, and design and build AI products of my own. If you're working on something similar, or trying to get AI into production, I'd like to hear about it.

📍 Melbourne, Australia ✉ aston.gilliland@outlook.com