The engineer who also breeds geckos.
I'm Dusty Mumphrey — a software engineer from the Tyler, Texas area with 9 years of experience building production systems for healthcare companies, car dealerships, government agencies, and startups.
I went independent because I kept watching small businesses struggle with technical problems that weren't actually that hard to solve — they just didn't have anyone in their corner who could both understand the business problem and write the code to fix it.
Built By Dusty is that person.
I'm AWS and Azure certified. I've shipped apps to the App Store. I've built HIPAA-compliant platforms. I've led engineering teams. And I've built my own businesses from scratch, so I know what it actually means to have something at stake.
When I take on a project, I treat it like it's mine — because in a lot of ways, it is.
Why animal breeders?
I also breed leopard geckos. That's not a fun fact — it's relevant. I've lived the exact problems my breeder clients bring to me: the genetics spreadsheet that breaks when you add a new morph, the Instagram DMs that turn into deposits that turn into no-shows, the Shopify store that can't list a ball python without 12 workarounds.
When I built ReptiDex, I wasn't guessing at what features matter. I was building the app I needed for my own animals. When I built Geckistry, I was solving my own sales problem. That domain knowledge doesn't show up on a resume. It shows up when the software actually fits.
Where I've Worked
Nine years across industries that couldn't afford to get it wrong.
Vault Health
Healthcare / Telehealth
- Built HIPAA-compliant infrastructure for a multi-region telehealth platform
- Maintained less than 1% incident rate across Kubernetes clusters spanning multiple AWS regions
- Designed Lambda/SQS fan-out architectures and DynamoDB audit trails for compliance
DealerOn
Automotive Ad Tech
- Led a team of 7 engineers
- Improved test coverage from ~50% to 85% in six weeks
- Designed an event-driven personalization engine with 87% dealer enrollment
GovStar
Government Contracting
- Modernized data systems used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and FEMA
- Delivered production systems under federal compliance requirements
Clockwork
Healthcare SaaS
- Patient intake and billing platform development