About Me

👋 Hi, I’m Nick Babcock (résumé: html / pdf).

Infectiously curious, knowledgeable, and tenacious, I blend lessons learned from past experiences with emerging trends. I lead teams to ship with pride, whether it’s through simplification or delightfully efficient software.

  • 10+ years of fullstack experience (React, Next.js, Python, Rust, Postgres)
  • Principal developer behind flagship products from startups to big tech
  • Expertise ranging from systems programming to frontend mental models
  • Thrives on up-leveling teams and the organizations
  • Open source creator of apps and libraries surpassing 2 million downloads

Don’t just take my word for it:

Nick is a multiplicative force that consistently addresses and eliminates roadblocks presented to other engineers without hesitation so we can continue shipping features. Fast.

Staff Engineer @ Dropbox

I’m more than just a programmer:

  • Amateur homelabber
  • Boardgame bungler
  • University of Michigan alumnus
  • Boutique small form factor admirer

Career Journey

Most recently, I helped lead a new product initiative team at Dropbox.

Before that, I was at a direct to consumer ecommerce company for a few years during the height of the pandemic to scale their engineering department.

And I kicked off my career as a founding engineer for a B2B startup in the high performance computing space, where I was there for 9 successful years. I opted for a startup over big tech as I crave knowledge and impact, two things amplified in a startup environment.

We started from a shared desk in a co-working space, selling our flagship web portal I wrote in Python and React. The success of this product catapulted us into larger offices with bigger teams to take on more ambitious projects.

One of those projects launched us into healthcare consulting when I helped lead a rewrite of a service under the state of Michigan and reduced their operating costs by 96%. Client was so impressed that this fueled many years of growth where we soon became a linchpin in the success of services powering healthcare in the state.

After 9 years, I was ready for a new industry and new challenges. I was brought onboard an ecommerce company to help transition to a first class engineering department to scale their site and operations during the pandemic.

As the department’s technical leader, I

  • Developed a subscription management pipeline, enabling product innovations
  • Fostered a performance-driven culture rooted in core web vitals, resulting in a 35% increase in conversion rates
  • Centralized accessibility, safeguarding the company from drive-by lawsuits and costly protections.

After a few years, I felt the time was right to seek opportunities in big tech to scale my experience and passion even further. I recognized the best use of my time is often spent empowering other engineers, whether through sponsorship, driving organizational growth, or removing roadblocks. Dropbox was a great fit for this, I quickly found myself contributing frontend talks at a company-wide conference, and regularly presenting technical deep dives.

Through everything I’ve learned that my experience and passion can help companies large and small, from B2B to direct to consumer.

How does that sound? Let’s chat.

Nick.