About me
AsaMasterson.
I'm a BSc Business Computing student at the University of Northampton and a developer with a particular interest in self-hosted infrastructure, writing Python, and building things that are actually useful.
I grew up in Oxford and started messing around with Python and Linux in secondary school — that's when I built my first website, asamasterson.com, off a Raspberry Pi. I went on to study a T-Level in Digital Production, Design and Development at City of Oxford College (Merit), completing an industry placement at Oxfordshire County Council as a Customer Support Engineer.
Outside of university I run my own server stack on bigfluffy.monster — Coolify, MinIO S3, databases — and I'm active in the NN1 Dev community in Northampton.
"I think T Levels are good for anyone who likes to be more interactive and hands-on with work-based learning and group work."
— Asa Masterson · Activate Learning T Levels Celebration Week 2023
City of Oxford College · 2023
01 · Events & Hackathons
Hackathons & Events.
Competing, building, and meeting people — in and out of university.
Toru Digital · NorthamptonToru Digital
Toru Challenge Hackathon
Whilst at university, I took part in a two-day industry challenge at the University of Northampton set by Toru Digital, tasked with designing and developing an e-commerce solution for a high-end jewellery company with a focus on improving the online customer journey. I built the FastAPI backend, handling product reviews and e-commerce queries, containerised with Docker and running a self-hosted MySQL database.
Triad
Triad Hackathon
Whilst at university, I took part in a two-day industry challenge event at Triad's offices in Milton Keynes, tasked with designing and prototyping an AI-powered Discovery Plan tool aligned to Government digital standards. Working under real industry expectations, teams integrated OpenAI models, considered security, governance and ethical AI constraints, and delivered commercially focused presentations to Triad's senior leadership.
Metropolitan Police & AWS
Met Police × AWS Innovation Challenge
Whilst at college, I took part in a workshop event at Experience Haus in London bringing together young people, designers, and police officers for an honest open discussion on improving public-police relationships. Rather than a coding challenge, the day was about co-designing real solutions — working with designers and mentors from employers, charities, and government to tackle difficult societal problems. Sponsored by Amazon Web Services.
Venue
Experience Haus, Shoreditch, London
Hosts
Metropolitan Police · Amazon Web Services
02 · Approach
How I Work.
A few principles I keep coming back to.
Build to learn
I learn fastest by shipping something real. Side projects — from a view counter to a full Django e-commerce site — teach me more than any tutorial.
Own your stack
I self-host my websites, APIs, and databases on my own VPS using Coolify, with MinIO handling object storage — including assets for this site. Running it all means I understand every layer.
Community first
I'm a regular at NN1 Dev Club in Northampton — monthly talks covering everything from compiler internals to async workflows, followed by drinks where the best conversations happen.