Resume
ledger of personal capitalism
My focus has always been on the human side of development - I love to bring unknown techniques to the forefront and make them accessible for everyone. I work best in diverse teams, and have worked remotely for over 10 years. Let’s create something amazing together!
Check out my GitHub for more, and please bug me via email: nick@quaran.to.
— Nick (@qrush)
Work
Wistia (2019-present)
Director, Platform Engineering (2022-present)
AI-Native Development
- Organized a cross-functional team around building a software factory.
- Shipped developer workflows that made agentic tools practical and accessible across the organization.
- Made the business case for AI-native software development and aligned priorities, practices, and adoption.
- Lead three teams and 13 engineers across App Platform, Media Platform, and Site Reliability Engineering.
- Partner with Product Engineering to identify and remove developer friction, while taking on larger platform investments that improve team velocity.
- Manage Engineering vendors and cloud costs, including AWS spend monitoring, Savings Plans, and Marketplace purchasing.
- Drive pragmatic modernization across internal tooling, security, and engineering practices.
Engineering Manager (2020-2022)
- Managed 5 direct reports on the App Platform team to development new primitives/building blocks for the entire Engineering department
- Introduced ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) into use and led their adoption as a way to build consensus on big problems
- Led/directed projects to move Wistia’s CI system onto GitHub Actions, centralized documentation via Spotify’s Backstage, helped formalize our visual design system as its own package via Storybook/NPM
Staff Software Engineer (2019-2020)
Chatterbug, Engineering Lead (2017-2019)
- Helped launch a new language learning service using WebRTC in October 2017
- Performed code reviews, mentored mentor more junior members of the team, assisted in planning software iterations
- Led a revamp for internal communication, from how all-hands meetings work to daily information sharing across the company and 3 different timezones
- Ensured infrastructure uptime for our customers and set up alerting for critical services
Agrilyst, Senior Engineer (2016-2017)
- Continously delivered a Rails 5 / React app to track data for indoor farmers and growers
- Mentored and pair-programmed with junior developers and get them up to speed with Rails and JS
- Maintained an API for external temperature, nutrient, and soil sensors to visualize their data
- Worked directly with customers to diagnose issues and with hardware vendors to integrate their equipment
Basecamp, Programmer (2011-2016)
- Launched, improved, and maintained two major new products: Basecamp 2 in 2012, and Basecamp 3 in 2015.
- Developed the company’s first in-house iPhone app.
- Redesigned and reinforced our application to work on every iOS device, established a team working on native applications on iOS and Android.
- Created a knowledge base for the company’s internal services and apps to assist with on-boarding for new employees.
thoughtbot, Web Developer (2009-2011)
- Shipped several client projects involving microdonations, social media, and integrations with iOS applications.
- Contributed to many OSS libraries, including paperclip, clearance, and factory_girl.
- Mentored junior developers in the company’s budding apprenticeship program.
- Launched a product to help visualize Redis data.
Internships (2005-2010)
I worked for several organizations while in college, including:
I focused mostly on web technology - ASP, ASP.NET, JavaScript, C#, and discovered Ruby.
Open Source Contributions
- RubyGems.org - Started in 2009 as “Gemcutter”, now serving Ruby gems for everyone.
- RubyGems Guides - Modernized RubyGems’ documentation with up-to-date tutorials.
- Jekyll - Maintained the library, cut down issues, built out an extensive test suite.
- Ruby on Rails - 11 patches and counting.
- sub - A simple way to organize shell programs with subcommands like
git or rbenv.
- motion-layout - A iOS6+ auto layout DSL for RubyMotion apps.
- m - An RSpec-inspired test runner for Test::Unit and MiniTest.
Side Projects
- Mx. Desk - A coworking billing service, formerly known as Desktime.
- CoworkBuffalo - Buffalo’s premier Coworking community, which I cofounded in 2012.
- NickelCityRuby - 200 people visited Buffalo to celebrate Ruby in 2013 and 2014.
- OpenHack - A framework to host social coding meetups. Spread to 80 cities and counting.
- pickaxe.club - Weekend-only Minecraft server hosting.
Writing
Here’s some of my favorite samples:
Check out more at my archive.
Talks
Not counting lightning talks, where I’ve written twitter bots on stage and made silly GIFs of myself:
Recognition
Ruby Hero Award, 2010
Interviews / Press
Education
Rochester Institute of Technology, 2005-2010
B.S. in Software Engineering, B.S. in Computer Science
🙇🏻
Experience
Wistia 2019–present
Director, Platform Engineering 2022–present
AI-Native Development
- Organized a cross-functional team around building a software factory.
- Shipped developer workflows that made agentic tools practical and accessible across the organization.
- Made the business case for AI-native software development and aligned priorities, practices, and adoption.
Platform Leadership & Operations
- Lead three teams and 13 engineers across application platform, media platform, and site reliability engineering.
- Partner with product teams to remove developer friction and deliver platform investments that improve engineering velocity.
- Manage engineering vendors and AWS costs through spend monitoring, Savings Plans, and Marketplace purchasing.
- Drive pragmatic modernization across internal tooling, security, and engineering practices.
Engineering Manager 2020–2022 · Managed five engineers on App Platform; introduced ADRs and led adoption of GitHub Actions, Backstage, and Storybook.
Staff Software Engineer 2019–2020 · Re-architected billing from Braintree to Stripe; delivered Rails upgrades, performance work, and GraphQL features.
Chatterbug 2017–2019
Engineering Lead · Helped launch a WebRTC language-learning service; mentored engineers, planned iterations, improved remote communication, and maintained production infrastructure.
Agrilyst 2016–2017
Senior Engineer · Built a Rails and React data platform for indoor farms; integrated sensor hardware and worked directly with customers.
Basecamp 2011–2016
Programmer · Launched and maintained Basecamp 2 and 3; built the company’s first in-house iPhone app and helped establish its native-app team.
thoughtbot 2009–2011
Web Developer · Shipped client applications, contributed to open source, and mentored apprentices.
Open Source & Community
Started RubyGems.org (as Gemcutter); maintained Jekyll; contributed to Ruby on Rails and thoughtbot libraries. Cofounded CoworkBuffalo, created OpenHack, organized NickelCityRuby, and built Mx. Desk.
Selected Talks
Speaker at RailsConf, RubyConf, RubyNation, CodeMash, and more. Ruby Hero Award, 2010.
Education
Rochester Institute of Technology · B.S., Software Engineering; B.S., Computer Science · 2010
