AW· Andre Westerlund
AKL · ··:··
Portfolio · Vol. 02 · 2026

Building quietsoftware forloud problems.

A.W. · 001

Full-stack engineer in Auckland, currently at Te Hiku Media building Kaituhi and Papareo.

Currently at Te Hiku Media

Building Kaituhi & Papareo. Always happy to talk to people building things. Drop a line.

→ See selected work→ Get in touch

Currently / 現在

Now.

Te Hiku Media, Full-stack engineer2024-present

Building Kaituhi (kaituhi.nz) and Papa Reo (papareo.io): Aotearoa’s only fully-sovereign language AI, productised. Recent work includes revamped product surfaces with Stripe and Papareo built end-to-end. Signup, subscriptions, API token issuance and a metered developer dashboard for Tuhi, Arero and Reo.

↗kaituhi.nz↗papareo.io

§ Index

Selected
work.

A working list of things shipped, sorted by recency.

  1. 01
    PapareoTe Hiku Media
    Self-serve developer platform for Aotearoa’s only fully-sovereign language AI. Tuhi (speech-to-text, 92.8% te reo / 88.3% NZ English), Arero (pronunciation assessment) and Reo (text-to-speech). Built end-to-end: auth, Stripe subscriptions, API token issuance, usage metering and a developer dashboard. Trained under the Kaitiakitanga License with no stolen data, indigenous data sovereignty preserved, and on-device inference available.
    DjangoPythonVueStripeDockerKubernetes
    2025→
  2. 02
    KaituhiTe Hiku Media
    Web app that automatically transcribes te reo Māori and New Zealand English audio and video, built for Aotearoa. Fluent in bilingual content and regional accents where mainstream tools fail. Used by media organisations, researchers and whānau. Data sovereignty enforced via the Kaitiakitanga License so users keep control of what they upload.
    DjangoPythonVueStripeDockerKubernetes
    2024 →→
  3. 03
    Samoa IT Association DBMSregister.sita.ws
    Membership platform for the Samoa IT Association. Online registration, approval workflows, fee collection and renewal reminders.
    Vue 3InertiaLaravel 10PHP 8
    2023→
  4. 04
    Doblins NFT (ERC721)Smart contract & dapp
    ERC721 contract written and deployed for the Doblins collection. Built a Next.js dapp integrated with ethers.js for NFT minting via RPC calls to the contract on Ethereum mainnet.
    SolidityRemixNext.jsethers.js
    2022→
  5. 05
    Vodafone Samoa (internal suite)Vodafone Samoa
    Built and shipped a series of internal tools: coupon generator, customer feedback capture, roadshow ops app, promotions checker, ticketing. Used daily by retail, marketing and field teams.
    FlutterReactNode.jsMongoDBDocker
    2019-2021→
  6. FIN

    Older work archived.

§ Chronicle

The
long way.

Career, in reverse. Apia → Wellington → Auckland.

  1. 2024 →
    Full-stack engineer, Te Hiku Media

    Building Kaituhi & Papareo: Māori-language speech tech, productised. Stripe-billed product surfaces and end-to-end developer dashboard.

  2. 2022
    Marketing Cloud developer, Sleeq NZ

    Specialised in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform.

  3. 2021
    Founder, Samoa Code Hub

    Community of Samoan developers. Knowledge sharing and advocacy for the local tech industry.

  4. 2019-2021
    Software developer, Vodafone Samoa

    Built, tested and shipped internal web apps for retail, marketing and field ops. External client websites on the side.

  5. 2018
    BSc with Honours · Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington

    Postgraduate year with full-year 400-level project on securing a web server in the Wyvern programming language.

  6. 2017
    BSc · Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington

    Fully-funded scholarship. Foundations of data structures, algorithms, systems.

  7. 2017
    Summer intern, Datacom NZ

    ASP .NET feature on an internal app scanning magnetic tapes into data centre storage.

  8. 2014
    University Preparatory Year, National University of Samoa

    Top of cohort in Foundation Arts. 99% in Computer Science finals.

  9. 2013
    IT Helpdesk intern, Samoa Commercial Bank

    First taste of the trade: printers, PC builds, CAT-5 cabling.

§ Marginalia

Papers
& proofs.

· Education

  • BSc (Hons) · Computer Science

    Victoria University of Wellington2018

  • BSc · Computer Science

    Victoria University of Wellington2017

  • Foundation Top Arts Student

    National University of Samoa2014

· Certifications

  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals

    Microsoft2023

  • Salesforce: Marketing Cloud Admin

    Salesforce2023

  • Meta Front-End Developer

    Coursera2023

  • Meta Back-End Developer

    Coursera2023

· Recognition

  • Employee Appreciation Award

    Vodafone Samoa2019, 2020, 2021

§ Notation

Tools
at hand.

· Core
TypeScript · Node.js · React · Next.js · Vue · Python
· Frameworks
Django · FastAPI · React Native · Jetpack Compose · ExpressJS · NestJS · Laravel · .NET
· Infrastructure & Cloud
Docker · Kubernetes · Azure · AWS · GCP · Digital Ocean
· Data
Postgres · MongoDB · MySQL

§ Talk

Got something
worth building?

Based in

Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

Andre Westerlund · Full-stack engineer