I build the systems that have to work.
Software engineer · Stripe · Seattle
I'm Nykolas. I've spent my career on the systems that have to hold up: auth, migrations, and the guardrails that let everyone else move fast.
Before Stripe, I spent three and a half years at Google Cloud. Outside work, you'll find me in the mountains with my dog.
Four systems from Google Cloud and two from running CougarCS, each told as the decision that mattered.
Letting people connect their GitHub repos had an easy path (act as the user) and a harder one (a GitHub App with its own identity, scoped permissions and short-lived tokens). I argued for the harder one because later features would need to act when no one was there. Within months, one did.
Spotting runaway spend across AWS, Azure and GCP was the easy part; suspending environments without killing legitimate work was not. It shipped conservative, with a human override and a grace window, and tightened as it earned trust.
Replaced manual access reviews with a pipeline that checks every cloud environment, notifies owners and revokes access automatically. Every step is idempotent, and an unknown answer never counts as a no. Three provider-specific removal paths became one library.
Moved the platform's core data model inside a single write-lock window. The data went into a brand-new table, never edited in place, with a frozen build on standby, so a failure meant reverting a deploy rather than restoring a database.
Started as a tutor in the University of Houston's largest computer science organization and finished as its president, leading a team of 17 officers. We rebranded the org, built a sponsorship program that raised more than $30,000, and set attendance records along the way.
Founded an online tutoring program on Discord and recruited more than 30 volunteer tutors to run it. Behind the scenes, I moved the club's member ledger into a database, with an API the rest of its tools could share.
A turn-based business simulation, built as a proof of concept for multi-agent orchestration with Claude Code: one session plans, several build in parallel, and an independent reviewer checks the work against the spec.
This site. Static HTML, almost no JavaScript, drawn entirely from its own design system, with a real survey sheet of the Crestones.
A 2D platformer physics sandbox, written from scratch in Java.
Member management, automation and integrations for the University of Houston's largest CS organization.
3D model needs JavaScript and WebGL 2 · The survey sheet beside it shows the same data
The Crestones climb more than 6,000 feet straight out of the San Luis Valley above the town of Crestone, and Great Sand Dunes, the tallest dunes in North America, sit at the foot of the same range. I keep coming back.
On Monarch Pass, at the Continental Divide.
38.51°N 106.33°W
A half-mile wooded ravine in northeast Seattle. The daily walk, with crew.
47.67°N 122.31°W
A weekend of music in the Ozark National Forest, sixteen miles up the Pig Trail from Ozark, Arkansas.
35.71°N 93.80°W
Co-pilot on every mission that allows dogs. Usual training ground: Ravenna Park.
Archive · First flightSay hello. I read everything that comes in.
