Dan Nicholson
Principal Software Engineer at Endless
Denver, Colorado, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolDan Nicholson is a Principal Software Engineer based in Denver with 26 years of experience bridging system software, infrastructure, and DevOps across client and server stacks. He brings deep Linux and open-source expertise—contributing test automation to systemd and backend/DevOps improvements to projects like ostree—alongside strong Python and C skills. At Endless he progressed from configuration manager to principal engineer, owning releases and OS build pipelines while shipping resilient platform features. Earlier in his career he designed RF systems and ICs for satellite and phased-array applications, giving him an uncommon blend of low-level systems engineering and high-level software delivery. Colleagues rely on him for tackling tricky edge cases and improving test coverage, reflecting a pragmatic focus on reliability and observability.
26 years of coding experience
18 years of employment as a software developer
Master's Electrical Engineering, Master's Electrical Engineering at University of WashingtonBachelor of Science Electrical Engineering, Bachelor of Science Electrical Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison
Github Skills (51)
android-tools10
content-management-system10
package-management10
python10
scripting10
django10
testing10
packaging10
linux10
bash10
android-sdk10
android-build10
c-programming10
c1110
kivy10
Programming languages (20)
Github contributions (5)
ostreedev/ostree
Mar 2015 - Jan 2023
Operating system and container binary deployment and upgrades
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer & DevOps Engineer
Back-end Developer & DevOps EngineerContributions:201 reviews, 209 commits, 119 PRs in 7 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Dan primarily contributed to the ostree project by addressing a wide range of issues, including bug fixes and performance improvements. They focused on core aspects of the system, such as fixing object count output, addressing file system and directory related issues, and implementing functionalities like support for the --depth option and allowing HTTP headers in summary fetching. Additionally, the user worked on testing infrastructure and related code, indicating some familiarity with system build tools and/or DevOps tasks.
containersisolationdeploymentoperating-systempackage-manager
systemd/systemd
Mar 2016 - Aug 2024
The systemd System and Service Manager
Role in this project:QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:2 reviews, 5 PRs, 26 comments in 8 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Dan primarily contributed to the testing infrastructure of the `systemd` project. Their work involved extending existing test suites and improving test coverage for features such as `firstboot`. They modified shell scripts and C code, demonstrating a focus on ensuring the correct behavior of core system functionalities by adding new tests and modifying existing tests to cover edge cases. The commits also included handling of unprivileged setrlimit success scenarios within the testing framework.
servicesservice-managervagrantlinuxinit
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.