A breeder who builds software. Not the other way around.
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 breeders and small pet 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 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.
Why animal breeders?
I've been in the animal world my entire life. My family bred and showed ADBA American Pit Bull Terriers when I was growing up. Around 2005, we pivoted to American Bullies when the breed was still being created. I was part of the group that helped establish ABKC as a junior competitor, won Best in Show as a young adult, and later made group placements in UKC while helping found the American Bully breed club within that registry.
Today I breed crested geckos and Leachianus geckos through Geckistry, my own production breeding operation and e-commerce platform. I built ReptiDex because no adequate tool existed for tracking lineage, pairings, and clutch records the way a serious breeder actually needs. It hit 50 paid subscribers and 200 animals tracked within 9 days of launch.
I've lived the exact problems my 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 e-commerce platform that can't handle live animal sales without a dozen workarounds. When I build software for breeders, I'm not guessing at what features matter. I already know.
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
Web Development / E-Commerce
- Built custom WordPress themes and plugins for client projects
- Maintained and extended e-commerce applications