I'm Justin — an ML engineer and systems builder based in Melbourne. I currently wear two hats: Associate MLE at REA Group, where I work on the recommendation models powering Australia's largest property platform, and Lead Technical Developer at EdAtlas, where I architect and ship the tech that helps thousands of VCE students study smarter.
My thesis is simple: engineering excellence is downstream of clear systems thinking. Whether the system is a recommendation model, a multi-portal monorepo, or a 130-person organisation, the wins come from reducing friction and increasing signal-to-noise. Everything below is evidence of that thesis applied.
🏠 REA Group — Recommendation Models · Associate MLE Working on the recommendation systems that surface the right listings to millions of Australians searching for a home. Production ML at scale.
🎓 EdAtlas — Atlas Suite Platform · Lead Technical Developer Architecting a multi-portal platform (Student / Parent / Tutor / Admin / CRM + marketing site) for Melbourne's fastest-growing VCE tutoring company. Stack: Turborepo + pnpm monorepo, Next.js with role-based route groups, Supabase + Drizzle ORM, Cloudflare Stream for video, Vidstack player.
Each tile is shipped production work — not a side project, not a proof of concept. The arc below shows how I got here.
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🧠 ML & Data Recommendation systems · Deep learning · RAG pipelines · Vector databases · Embeddings · Classification · pandas · NumPy · scikit-learn · TensorFlow |
⚙️ Product Engineering Next.js · TypeScript · Supabase · Drizzle ORM · Turborepo · FastAPI · PostgreSQL · Cloudflare Stream · Docker · AWS |
🏛️ Systems & Ops Monorepo architecture · Design systems · Workflow automation · Team scaling · Communication frameworks (CLAPS) |
↑ generated daily by a GitHub Action. The snake's been busy.
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timeline
title Engineering & Leadership Evolution
2023 : Joined Kion Coaching
: Cut admin overhead 83%
: Education Lead at DeepNeuron
2024 : Built DAPPI XP (RAG engine)
: +289% engagement lift
: Vectorised criteria store
2025 : Appointed CEO — Monash DeepNeuron
: Led 130+ engineers
: Cut internal admin overhead 42%
2026 : Associate MLE — REA Group
: Lead Technical Developer — EdAtlas
: Notion Campus Lead (Melbourne)
2027 : Completing BE(Software) / BCom(Finance) part-time
: Scaling Atlas Suite to production
Before REA and EdAtlas, two roles shaped how I think:
🏛️ CEO, Monash DeepNeuron · 2025 Led Australia's largest student-led AI organisation — 130+ engineers, researchers, and creatives. Directed strategy, ran statewide hackathons (VicHack, 400+ participants), reduced internal admin overhead 42% through workflow design. Stepped down to focus on industry ML.
🧠 DAPPI XP — RAG Classification Engine · 2024, Monash DeepNeuron Built and shipped a RAG-based classification engine at DeepNeuron. Pipeline: ingestion → embedding → vectorised criteria store → retrieval-augmented scoring. Lifted user engagement +289% in production. Project wound down after stepping away from DeepNeuron.
📚 Notion Campus Lead, Melbourne · ongoing Driving Notion adoption across Monash's student engineering community.
A short bookshelf. Engineering and leadership both reward studying the people who got there first.
| Book | Author | The takeaway I apply |
|---|---|---|
| Atomic Habits | James Clear | You fall to the level of your systems. Why I optimise the workflow, not the willpower. |
| The Diary of a CEO | Steven Bartlett | The Five Buckets, in order. A framework for managing energy through fast role transitions. |
| Leaders Eat Last | Simon Sinek | The Circle of Safety. Learned managing a 130-person volunteer org; applies just as much to engineering teams. |
| Think Again | Adam Grant | Debugging your priors. The same loop whether the bug is in a model or a meeting. |
| Indistractable | Nir Eyal | Time-blocking and traction over distraction. Essential when you're holding two roles + part-time uni. |
| $100M Offers | Alex Hormozi | The Value Equation. Engineering is worthless without a problem worth solving. |
I'm not actively looking, but I'm always happy to swap notes with people working on:
- Recommendation systems — ranking, retrieval, two-tower models, candidate generation
- EdTech architecture — multi-portal platforms, content delivery, video at scale
- Student engineering communities — running them, scaling them, transitioning leadership
Reach out if any of that overlaps with your work.
"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
© 2026 Justin Suan Thiha · built in Melbourne · hand-authored SVGs in /assets