Nick Hess - Staff Engineering Leader

EMAIL•X•GITHUB•LINKEDIN

LIVING IN DENVER, CO

About

Staff Engineering Leader driving technical excellence and organizational growth at scale. Proven expertise in scaling teams, modernizing legacy systems, and delivering measurable business impact through innovative engineering solutions.

FEATURED

NEXT.JS CONF 2024

Presented "Incrementally migrating to Next.js from a client-side-only app" at Next.js Conf, sharing Peloton's multi-year migration journey to Next.js from a client-side-only app, focusing on improved page performance, productivity, and streamlined architecture.

Watch the talk ->

EXPERIENCE

PELOTON INTERACTIVE

STAFF TECH LEAD MANAGER: 07/2024 -> CURRENT

SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER: 09/2023 -> 07/2024

SOFTWARE ENGINEER: 05/2020 -> 09/2023

  • Lead Web Platform team of 4 senior engineers, shaping developer experience, CI/CD, and architecture serving 70+ engineers across the e-commerce organization.
  • Manage and mentor a team of 4 senior engineers, driving growth and technical excellence.
  • Spearheaded implementation of Self Service features enabling direct member order modifications, reducing support ticket volume by 40% during peak seasons.
  • Architected modernized frontend release process aligned with DORA metrics, resulting in 50%+ reduction in deployment lead time and 10% improvement in pipeline reliability.
  • Co-led critical migration from GraphQL monolith to federated architecture, eliminating schema-related incidents and enabling safe, autonomous schema changes.

LOFTSMART

FULL STACK ENGINEER: 04/2019 -> 03/2020

  • Architected and executed complete refactor from legacy multi-page application to modern React SPA, improving time-to-interactive by 30%.
  • Collaborated with design team to build comprehensive React component library, boosting development efficiency across teams.
  • Led TypeScript migration initiative for React frontend, resulting in 80% reduction in production bugs.
  • Developed interactive rental preference quiz, driving 10% conversion rate improvement across 5 university campuses.

BIG SPACESHIP

SENIOR TECHNOLOGIST: 02/2019 -> 04/2019

TECHNOLOGIST: 01/2017 -> 02/2019

JUNIOR TECHNOLOGIST: 07/2015 -> 01/2017

  • Delivered high-impact bespoke web experiences for premium clients including Starbucks, Compass, and Academy Award-winning director.
  • Implemented comprehensive engineering standards and best practices, including automated testing and code quality tools, resulting in 10% increase in project delivery efficiency.

EDUCATION

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

BACHELORS OF SCIENCE: MEDIA & INFORMATION

Interactive media design concentration

SKILLS

  • JavaScript, TypeScript, Kotlin, Python
  • React, NextJS
  • Docker, Netlify, Vercel, AWS, Google Cloud
  • Postgres, MySql, NoSql
  • GraphQL, REST
  • GitHub Actions