Isaac Rowntree
Head of Tech · CamperMate · Sydney, AU

Isaac Rowntree

Coder · Dancer · Photographer · Videographer · Trombonist · Motorcyclist

Email GitHub Zack Design
Background: shot by me · Melbourne 2016

24 years of shipping software — from solo web work in 2002 to a fleet of 26 Cloudflare Workers and an AI-powered travel platform at CamperMate today. Currently Head of Tech at CamperMate and proprietor of Zack Design, shipping SessionHQ — a modern multi-tenant check-in SaaS. Strongest where platform architecture meets AI-in-production: zero-downtime replatforms at the edge, RAG and agentic search tied directly to revenue — and the leadership range to carry both from proposal to board.

Based in Sydney, AU · Remote-first since 2016 · [email protected] · @isaacrowntree
Career

Experience

2002 — Present
Jul 2020 — Present6+ years

Head of Tech

CamperMate · Australia / New Zealand travel platform

Strategic replatform across six production systems with zero downtime. Rebuilt the engineering team, cut software/infrastructure spend to budget, and shipped an AI-powered travel platform with booking volume growing multiples year on year.

  • Grew online bookings from zero to a multi-million-dollar annual channel, with booking volume roughly doubling every year since launch
  • Rebuilt the engineering team into a smaller, stronger unit — 3 senior engineers out-shipping the previous 5 — while cutting software/infra spend roughly in half
  • Architected 6 production systems: React Native app, Next.js platform (millions of web visits a year), B2B dashboard, Analytics portal, Retool admin, + 26 Cloudflare Worker microservices (400k+ LOC)
  • Built the AI-powered travel platform — itineraries, translations, smart search — the primary product lever for booking growth
  • Led org-wide security transformation: OAuth, YubiKey hardware keys, pen testing
  • Maintained continuous iOS/Android operation through a full replatform while retiring legacy systems
  • Established SRE practice (DataDog, Rollbar, automated alerting) → 99.9% uptime, 99.5%+ crash-free users, ~3× category-median app engagement
Mar 2016 — Jun 20204 years

Software Engineer

Redbubble · Global creative marketplace

Rotated across five engineering teams, from supply-chain logistics to the retail frontend.

  • Fulfilment, Visual Merchandising & Supply Chain — order-routing and inventory systems
  • Frontend Platform — shared design-system and infra for the retail site
  • Product API Platform — backends for product data and pricing
  • Membership & Commercial Frontend — artist and customer-facing surfaces
2002 — 2016Before Redbubble

Zack Design · Ray White · TAFE

Founder / Senior Developer / Educator

Fourteen years running Zack Design as a boutique consultancy, with two stints inside Ray White and a side-line teaching VET multimedia.

  • Zack Design (2002–2016) — Open-source WordPress plugins; Senior Developer at Bendix Brakes (Drupal); Tech Lead + Network Architect at iSolar Schools (renewables monitoring) and Power Portal; Tech Lead on a Rails telco POS app
  • Ray White Group (2012–2015) — Senior Developer on Ray White Office + Agent + Retail sites; Tech Lead on Loan Market Broker, Intranet (Whiteboard), Living Here; Lead Architect on AWS migration; SEO work that lifted lead conversion from 2.5% → 5%; SCRUM Master; internal email-signature app saving $15k/year
  • Swinburne + Gordon TAFE (2009–2011) — taught VET multimedia, business, finance, OH&S + 1-on-1 disability + adult short courses
Flagship builds

Selected work

Five deep builds
2020 — Present · Platform

CamperMate Replatform

Six systems, zero downtime, still shipping

Ongoing replacement of the legacy CamperMate stack with six interconnected production systems, using Cloudflare Worker proxies for incremental, reversible transitions — booking volume roughly doubling every year, while continuously operating the iOS/Android apps through the migration.

  • React Native app 35+ modules, 80%+ test coverage, 99.5%+ crash-free users, ~3× category-median engagement
  • Next.js travel platform 70k+ LOC TypeScript, 119 App Router pages, 202 components, 35+ languages, 10k+ POIs with AI-generated itineraries
  • B2B dashboard + Analytics portal multi-tenant SaaS, RBAC, municipal clients, Power BI integration
  • 26 Cloudflare Workers 400k+ LOC, global edge deployment, proxy-based risk-free transitions, zero-downtime deploys
2026 · Zack Design SessionHQ Flagship SaaS · my own product

Modern multi-tenant check-in platform for dance studios, gyms, and martial-arts schools. PIN pad, NFC tap, QR kiosk check-in, pass management, Square payments, real-time analytics, GDPR-ready from day one. Shipped and running real customers.

  • Architecture Next.js 16 + React 19 on Cloudflare Workers via OpenNext; Supabase Postgres with row-level security per tenant
  • Payments Square integration — cards-on-file, auto-renew, PCI-safe tokenisation via Supabase Vault
  • Testing 800+ tests across Vitest and Playwright
2022 — Present · 4 years

AI Travel Platform

Started with Elasticsearch, now an agentic layer

Four years of compounding AI investment across CamperMate — started when Elasticsearch was first introduced for search, grew into a full AI layer: generated itineraries, contextual activity recommendations, typo-tolerant hybrid search, automated multi-language content translation, and a conversational travel agent. Running on Cloudflare AI Workers with hybrid online/offline capability in the mobile app.

  • Conversational agent travel Q&A grounded over POIs and routes
  • Agentic search harness iterated against live GA4 / BigQuery engagement data
  • MCP surface exposing the platform to AI agents
  • RAG + vector search across 10k+ POIs in 35+ languages
  • Automated translation keeps the catalogue current without manual ops
  • Search evolution Elasticsearch → Typesense for typo-tolerance at scale
  • Smart geographic validation for submitted content
2026 · Platform

Offline Maps Pipeline

9 regions, 9× smaller, four cents a month

Self-hosted OSM vector→raster offline-basemap pipeline for the CamperMate mobile app — planetiler builds, tileserver-gl rendering, MapLibre on device. A normalised MBTiles dedup schema plus WebP compression turned a storage problem into a rounding error.

  • 21 GB → 2.3 GB across all 9 ANZ regions — ~9× smaller
  • 71.8% block-level dedup on the largest region
  • ~$0.04/month R2 storage for the entire tile fleet
  • Hybrid online/offline — the same tiles serve the app with no signal
2012 — 2016 · Enterprise

Ray White + iSolar + Power Portal

Earlier tech-lead work

Four years of tech-lead and architect roles spanning real estate, renewable energy monitoring, and enterprise power — before the move to Redbubble and CamperMate.

  • Ray White Lead Architect on AWS migration; Tech Lead on Intranet (Whiteboard), Loan Market Broker, Living Here; SEO work taking lead conversion from 2.5% → 5%
  • iSolar Schools Tech Lead + Network Architect on the schools renewable-energy monitoring system
  • Power Portal Tech Lead + Network Architect on an enterprise power-company suite
  • Bendix Brakes Senior Developer (Drupal) during the Zack Design years
Shipped in public

Open source

More on GitHub

bike-part-planner

TypeScript · Bike fitment

A test-driven, code-as-data engine for the question every rider Googles: will this part fit my bike? Rear shocks, forks, ebike motors & batteries, drivetrain, brakes, cockpit — deterministic checks that return pass / warn / block with reasons, never a black-box yes/no. AI and guided measurement fill the frame data manufacturers don't publish. MIT.

TypeScriptDeterministicTest-drivenZero-dep repo

linework

TypeScript · 3D SVG

True-3D technical drawings in SVG — in ~180 lines, zero dependencies. Rotate, project, depth-sort, paint. Import a glTF/OBJ mesh and it extracts the feature edges into a rotatable, themeable, crawlable line drawing — no WebGL. Renders server-side too. MIT.

TypeScriptSVGglTF importZero-dep demo repo

rampset

Next.js · PWA

Offline-first barbell strength log you actually own. Guided 5×5 & Madcow with auto-progression, per-side plate math, PR tracking. IndexedDB-first and fully offline; optional per-user Durable Object sync; self-hostable on Cloudflare. MIT.

Next.jsReactDurable Objects repo

bezant

Rust · Trading infra

Typed async client for the Interactive Brokers Client Portal Web API. Five surfaces — Rust facade, HTTP sidecar, CLI, MCP server, TypeScript client — generated from one vendored OpenAPI spec (154 paths, 1030 types) with a 13-step normalisation pipeline.

RustTokioAxumOpenAPIMCP repo

slackbuzz-cli

Go · CLI

Slack from the terminal. Inbox, messages, search, reactions, status — no leaving flow. Ships as a Homebrew tap.

GoCobraSlack API repo

clickup-cli

Go · CLI

ClickUp from the terminal with git integration and AI-agent-friendly JSON output. 30+ commands for tasks, sprints, comments.

GoCobraGitHub API repo

ledger

Python · Finance

Personal-finance ETL for Australian banks → ATO-ready tax reports. 10 parsers across 7 sources, rules-based categorisation, local SQLite.

PythonFlaskSQLite repo

react-native-nitro-unzip

RN · Native module

High-performance ZIP for React Native via Nitro JSI. Benchmarked ~10,000 files/sec, progress callbacks, AES-256, zero bridge overhead.

TypeScriptSwiftKotlin repo

claude-social-skills

Claude Code · Plugins

Claude Code plugin marketplace for social posting (X, Reddit, FB, IG), eBay listings, and Himalaya email — scripts + skills, no MCP.

PythonClaude Code repo

sequin

Elixir · Postgres CDC fork

Maintained fork of sequinstream/sequin — Postgres change data capture to streams, queues and search indexes. Upstream went unmaintained in Feb 2026; TripTech stewards the fork and runs Sequin in production.

ElixirPostgresKafka repo

color-grade-ai

Claude skill · Video

AI-assisted .cube LUT generator for DaVinci Resolve and Premiere. Analyses a frame, writes a targeted correction LUT.

PythonRuby repo

deflicker-runner

Python · Video

Kills LED PWM flicker in 4K video in 400MB of RAM. CUDA decode/encode, streams via ffmpeg without buffering whole clips.

PythonffmpegGPU repo

stamp-scanner

iOS + Mac · Vision

iPhone-as-macro-scanner paired with Mac running SAM 3 segmentation + local Qwen3-VL identification. Local-first, with optional Colnect catalogue lookup.

SwiftPythonSAM 3 repo
Merged into other people's code

Contributions

Fixes to libraries I ship on

react-native-nitro-toast

React Native · Nitro toast

kiethuynh0904/react-native-nitro-toast · PR #28

Added tappable toasts (onPress) and a count badge (badgeCount) to the Nitro-based toast library.

Open TypeScriptNitro PR

expo-open-ota

Expo · OTA server

mercuretechnologies/xprem (formerly expo-open-ota) · PR #35

Fixed cold-manifest 500s that surfaced immediately after an OTA publish; the maintainer adopted the fix, plus tests, in PR #41.

Adopted upstream GoExpo Updates PR

ableton-mcp

MCP · Ableton Live

ahujasid/ableton-mcp · PR #78

Hardened connection handling for WSL2 and improved overall reliability.

Merged PythonMCP PR

react-native-paper

Callstack · UI kit

callstack/react-native-paper · PR #4880

Fall back to the theme fontWeight to prevent a SIGSEGV on the new Fabric renderer.

Open FabricTypeScript PR

Upstream bug reports

Filed · fixed upstream

supabase-js · braze-swift-sdk · next.js

Reports that led to fixes: supabase-js silently dropping auth.lockAcquireTimeout (#2308), a Braze Swift SDK crash after changeUser() (#191), and an unsafe RSC bot-protection recommendation in the Next.js CDN caching docs (#96880). More open at OpenNext, Sentry, Typesense and Statsig.

3 fixed supabase braze next.js
What I'm fluent in

Skills

Current · 2026
Languages
TypeScript JavaScript Rust Go Python Ruby SQL Swift Kotlin
Frameworks
Next.js React React Native Expo Nitro Modules Hono tRPC GraphQL OpenAPI MCP Tokio / Axum Flask Tailwind
Infra & Data
Cloudflare Workers OpenNext R2 Durable Objects Supabase PlanetScale Postgres Typesense Prisma / Kysely BigQuery Sentry DataDog Rollbar AWS (Cognito / Amplify) Sceptre IaC Firebase Resend Sequin
AI & ML
Claude Code skills CF AI Workers GPT-4 Llama Qwen3-VL RAG Vector search Conversational agents Agent harnesses & evals MCP servers llama.cpp / MLX Local-LLM benchmarking SAM 3 Ollama ETL pipelines
Leadership
Team scaling Technical hiring Performance management Architecture Budget ownership Board presentations Security (OAuth / YubiKey / RBAC / GDPR)
DevOps & SRE
GitHub Actions Zero-downtime deploys Playwright Vitest / Jest Doppler secrets Observability
Who vouches

References

Three voices · more on request

Although Isaac's job title was Senior Developer, he performed many roles — instrumental in all facets of digital development and digital marketing. Lead architect on the AWS migration, lead generation (Salesforce), intranet builds, and SEO/analytics. Values that enhanced not just the dev team but the whole company. I would happily re-employ him — a valuable asset to any team.

Scott Morgan

Head of Digital Development
Ray White Group

Ray White · senior developer

Zack Design rescued a huge project for MJ Penner Consulting, re-building from scratch in a couple of weeks what our previous contractor could not do in months. Isaac's engineering leadership has allowed us to make smarter decisions that have saved us thousands of dollars on every project we've engaged together.

Michael Penner

Director
MJ Penner Consulting

Zack Design client

Isaac and his team at Zack Design have been an integral part of our online success. Their technical expertise, software development skills, and project management work is outstanding. I would not hesitate in recommending their services.

Tomas Molloy

Director
iSolar

Zack Design client

Dancer, trombonist, photographer/videographer as @zemonstas, motorcyclist, cyclist, 5× Tough Mudder, 5× Spartan, three summers working dance events in Sweden, and — most recently — learning Spanish.

Education
BAppSc Information Technology·Cert IV Training & Assessment·BentoBox·PD courses in AWS, UX, Agile, Salesforce

Let's work together.

I'm always interested in conversations about engineering leadership, AI-in-production, SaaS product work, and deep technical problems.

[email protected] GitHub Twitter / X LinkedIn @zemonstas