Nick Shimokochi
Phone: 313-451-1382
Email: nick@shimokochi.com
Engineering manager with hands-on depth in cloud-native platform engineering, distributed systems, and CI/CD. Consistent track record of stepping into complex technical and organizational situations and creating clarity, momentum, and results. I lead from the front: architecture decisions, direct IC contribution, and a structured approach to the professional growth of each team member. I build teams around clear communication, thoughtful planning, and a culture where engineers take ownership of execution.
EXPERIENCE
Software Engineering Manager
Citrine Informatics
San Francisco, CA (Remote)
2025-Present
Platform engineering leadership for a materials science AI/ML platform; infrastructure and MLOps layer supporting experiment data pipelines, ML workloads, and multi-tenant compute at scale.​​
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Redesigned deployment architecture to a modern EKS/ArgoCD GitOps platform, eliminating operational toil and establishing a scalable multi-tenant foundation for ML workload execution.
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Took over a multi-tenant compute migration mid-effort, built on the Temporal task framework, and drove it to production delivery.
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Drove improvements in team cohesion, collaboration, and delivery velocity through direct people development and clear expectation-setting.
2025 - Present
Engineering Lead
Nebula.io
New York, NY (Remote)
2022-2025
Managed two concurrent teams, development (up to 11) and DevOps (2), while contributing directly as an IC. Nebula was an AI-driven talent intelligence platform; my teams owned the product backend and all infrastructure.
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Reduced build times 50%+ and cut deployment costs 25%+ by re-engineering the CI/CD pipeline
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Architected a task execution framework that became the backbone of core platform functionality.
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Owned all infrastructure supporting the AI platform: compute, deployment, and operational reliability.
2022 - 2025
Engineering Manager
Pantheon Systems
San Fransisco, CA (Remote)
2021-2022
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Led a dedicated team responsible for delivering Pantheon’s Autopilot product, increasing product stability and reducing bug reports through proactive leadership and refined development practices.
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Spearheaded team coordination to align execution with key product priorities, driving consistent sprint performance and meeting project deadlines on schedule.​
2021 - 2022
Lead Software Engineer
Altair Engineering (now Siemens HPCWorks)
Troy, MI
2014 – 2021
Grew from software engineer to lead by 2019, taking on architectural ownership and team direction across multiple product lines.
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Designed and built a plugin-style distributed task execution framework in Python over AMQP; this became the architectural foundation of Altair Control (now HPCWorks Control).
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Replaced a third-party installer with an original Python framework, including a purpose-built graph contraction algorithm for dynamic dependency resolution; this removed a hard bottleneck and put release capacity entirely in the team's hands.
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Automated HPC system deployment and configuration (PBS Pro) across on-premise and cloud environments.
2014 - 2021
EDUCATION
Oakland University
Rochester, MI
Applied Mathematics | 2006 – 2011
M.A. earned; PhD coursework completed
2006 - 2009
Middle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, TN
B.S., Applied Mathematics | 2001 – 2006
2001 - 2005
SKILLS & EXPERTISE
Leadership
Team building · Performance management · Hiring · Technical mentorship · Agile process design
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Cloud Development
GCP · AWS · Azure · Docker · Kubernetes · Linux
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Platform & Infrastructure
Kubernetes · Karpenter · ArgoCD · Keycloak · Helm · Terraform · Docker · AWS · GCP · Linux
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CI/CD & Pipelines
GitHub Actions (advanced) · GitLab CI · Jenkins · Docker layer optimization · Self-hosted runners · GitHub Apps · Shared workflows · Repository dispatch
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Orchestration & Distributed Systems
Temporal · AMQP · MQTT · Celery · Mainflux · Multi-tenant compute architecture · HPC (PBS Pro)
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Observability
Datadog · Prometheus/Grafana
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Recent Stack Experience
Python · FastAPI · Flask · Bash · MongoDB · Keycloak · PostgreSQL · Elasticsearch
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AI-Assisted Development
Deep integration of Cursor and Claude Code · Agentic coding workflows · Context engineering · Custom tooling built on LLM APIs · MCP server development