Nikki Asteinza
Contact

About me

I'm a Venezuelan software engineer, but Spain is home: I have Spanish family and I've lived here for over 20 years, in Madrid. I like building useful things, and that has taken me through 10+ years of XR, defence, Industry 4.0, semiconductor, pharma, rail and e-learning — plus my own product platform. Now I'm making the formal jump into technical leadership.

I come from two places, not one

Psychology. My degree is in Psychology (UAM), with advanced training in coaching and NLP. It's not decoration: it's half of how I work.

Technology. On that base I specialised properly: web design, two Master's degrees (graphic computing/VR/simulation and game development with Unity), a full-stack bootcamp and ten years of software in sectors where detail matters.

That dual base shapes how I lead: technical architecture and team health are the same problem seen from two angles.

The short version

My path has a simple logic: at each step I learned what the previous one had shown me I was missing.

flowchart LR web["Web design<br/>and development"] -->|"I lacked OOP"| unity["Unity"] unity -->|"I needed<br/>maths and rendering"| cg["Graphic computing"] cg -->|"a month of<br/>backend C# + SQL"| fs["Full-stack"] fs --> goal["Building<br/>useful things"] xr["XR · out of passion"] -.-> goal

I started in web design and development. There I saw I was missing object-oriented programming, so I went into Unity to learn it. Building personal projects, I realised I needed more maths and rendering, which is why I did the Master's in graphic computing. And after a month doing backend in C# with SQL, I realised I was missing a full-stack view — so the last thing I studied was a full-stack bootcamp.

XR has been the constant add-on: I love cutting-edge technology and bringing it closer to everyday users.

That has taken me through QA and automation, Unity Technologies, computer vision at SpatialPort, industrial XR at Capgemini, European Defence Fund programmes at Indra and, now, Lead Developer on the F126 frigate programme.

Note

But the throughline isn't XR. It's building useful things — I don't mind if they're not XR.

How I work

Whatever the role, there are three things I do in every team:

  • Automate the repetitive. Reporting pipelines, build automation, Unity tooling, cross-department PowerShell automation. Whatever the team does by hand over and over, I turn into a process.
  • Mentor for real. Not just reviewing PRs: technical direction, defending architecture standards and supporting devs as they grow. A team that communicates well ships; one that doesn't, doesn't — and that weighs more than the stack.
  • Lean on AI. I bring it into the daily flow —exploring architectures, iterating fast, writing and reviewing code— as a multiplier, not autopilot.

Why Notipad

It started in early 2026 out of pure need: I used Obsidian, but its free version didn't give me two things I needed daily — a visual editor and Git. So I built my own.

What was going to be "a Markdown editor for me" kept growing. Along the way I realised many of the pieces I'd built weren't the editor's: they were reusable capabilities. And the goal adjusted itself.

What it looked like What it actually was
The editor preview A render engine that could serve several products
The internal CSS A reusable visual system
Exporting by hand A publishing capability
My personal site The first test site for Notipad Publish (the one you're reading)
Note

This page uses no other engine: it was generated by Notipad's render + Publish. If the diagrams, columns and callouts look good here, it's because they look good in the product.

Today Notipad is no longer an editor: it's a platform — desktop editor, shared render engine, publishing service and the products I build on top.

Tip

I've built this whole journey leaning on AI throughout. It's not an extra: it's part of how one person sustains an editor, a platform and several products without a team behind them.

The blog writes itself (almost)

There's a blog, and I don't write it post by post. Every day, an AI automation reviews what I've made —what I decided, what I broke, what I learned— and drafts the summary. I review and publish: a technical journal that maintains itself, almost.

Note

Double dogfooding: the content is generated by an AI automation and published by Notipad. The site you're reading and the blog that goes with it come from the same system.

→ Read it here

What I'm looking for

The next career move is clear: the formal jump to Tech Lead / Developer Lead.

  • Technical leadership in projects where architecture still matters.
  • Small, autonomous teams rather than giant structures.
  • The domain matters less than the problem: XR, developer tooling, infrastructure, product… I don't mind the sector if there's something useful to build and care for how it's built.
  • Structural mentoring: not just PRs, also career direction and technical culture.
  • Room to write code when the problem justifies it. Leading isn't giving up coding — it's choosing better when to do it.

Beyond the keyboard

Native Spanish and advanced English. I live in Madrid.

I've played futsal for over twenty years — a team-sport player long before any technical title. The court teaches things no leadership course replicates: reading the game in real time, trusting whoever is next to you, owning mistakes fast and getting back into play. Those three are still the team skills I use most at work.

I'm devoted to my pets, fairly family-oriented and I love spending time with the people who matter to me. And when the mental noise allows, I invent: prototypes, side-projects, ideas that justify their existence simply because I enjoy building them. Some end up being products. Most don't. Both are fine by me.