Plotly Virtual Hangout - Austin at Martin Engineering

Austin Kiesewetter, a self-taught developer and software engineer at Martin Engineering, shared his journey from entrepreneurship to building open source tools for the Plotly Dash community. His diverse career has spanned manufacturing, algorithmic trading, e-commerce, mental health nonprofits, and now industrial engineering, with Dash and Plotly playing a central role across each of these sectors.

He originally discovered Plotly through a Django integration while building trading dashboards and quickly began using Plotly for financial data visualization. He later adopted Dash for interactive front-end development, particularly valuing its React-based architecture, Python interface, and callback system.

Key highlights from his talk include:

• Built over 20 open source Dash components and accumulated 50,000+ downloads
• Uses Dash as a front end for interactive analytics and Django as a backend API server
• Leverages Dash callbacks and Dash Design Kit for responsive UI and mobile-ready layouts
• Emphasizes separation of concerns with Dash and Django running in isolated containers
• Demonstrates how AI tools can now assist in building custom Dash components quickly

Austin’s current role involves creating dashboards and applications for mining sector clients using Dash Enterprise and open source tools. His apps help operational teams access real-time insights from industrial systems, delivered with a clean interface that meets mobile and web needs.

He also shared his thoughts on community contribution, encouraging others to build Dash components by starting small and using available resources. His work extends the capabilities of the Dash framework and reflects how open source development can power production-grade data apps in heavy industry.

Watch the video to follow Austin’s full journey and see a live demo of his custom Dash components in action.