Nikki Asteinza
Software engineer in transition to technical leadership. XR, defence, enterprise. Ten years building things and, more recently, teams and platforms that build things.
I work in simulation, immersive training and tooling for engineering teams. My background is not only technical: I hold a Bachelor's in Psychology and advanced training in coaching and NLP. That combination shapes how I lead teams, because architecture decisions are never only code decisions, and a team that does not communicate does not ship, no matter how good its stack.
What I do now
- Lead Developer on the F126 Frigate Programme (Damen Naval — German Navy), building the VR production system for the programme. I designed and led a refactor and pipeline automation that, together with the team's effort, tripled VR course output: from 0.6 to 1.8 per month.
- I design and maintain Notipad, my own platform: Markdown editor, public web, identity and licensing APIs, and a roadmap to turn it into a publishing SaaS.
- I maintain and support Ultimate Porra in production, a social prediction game for football competitions.
- I'm building Reveal It, an app to sell digital surprises revealed by swiping across a card.
- I mentor dev teams. I review PRs. I defend architectural standards when needed — and I fight for team health when that's needed more.
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.
NoteDouble 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.
What I'm looking for
The next step is a clear Tech Lead / Developer Lead role: technically leading a small team, owning architecture, mentoring engineers and still writing code when the problem justifies it. If you want to know more, jump to the technical profile or reach out.
What I believe
- In building platforms, not isolated products. One engine, several sellable products on top.
- In reading the code before rewriting it. Most "refactorings" should have been extractions.
- In automating what repeats, and leaving alone what only happens once.
- In a good conversation with a dev saving three weeks of misaligned work. And a bad one costing you the dev.
Where to go next
- About me — longer story, context and what I'm looking for.
- CV — detailed technical experience.
- Blog — technical notes on architecture, platforms and product decisions.
- Contact — email and links.
Built with Notipad
This very site was generated by Notipad: its rendering engine and Publish pipeline turned a folder of Markdown into the pages you're reading. Two of the products I build on that platform:
Notipad
A Markdown editor and publishing platform: rich rendering —diagrams, formulas and highlighted code— and a Publish pipeline that takes your notes from folder to a public website with its own domain. This page is Notipad publishing itself.
Ultimate Porra
A social prediction game for football competitions: private games, live voting, official scoring and a real-time leaderboard. It runs on the same platform —identity, licensing, transactional email and edge— that powers the rest of the ecosystem.