Austin has been a book conservator at The Huntington Library since 2019.

He discovered the field of conservation while interning with a bookbinder in Seattle, then worked as a cobbler while completing pre requisites for graduate school.

Austin attended the Winterthur/University of Delaware program in art conservation and graduated in 2015. He has worked at the Folger Shakespeare Library and interned at Trinity College Dublin, the Weissman Preservation Center, and the Walters Art Museum.