Kirk Nickish
Sr. Director, BD And Strategy
Melbourne, Florida, United States
Summary
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RockstarKirk Nickish is a seasoned satellite communications executive and product leader with over 30 years of engineering and program management experience, currently serving as Sr. Director of BD and Strategy in Melbourne, Florida. He has a long track record delivering complex mobility and aero satcom solutions—from airborne Ka systems and commercial airline connectivity programs to land mobile and maritime multi-beam antenna products. Kirk blends hands-on engineering credibility (including systems, mechanical and project engineering roles at L3 and Thales) with commercial leadership and a strong customer-facing orientation across government and commercial markets. He is entrepreneurial by background, having led product strategy, go-to-market decisions, ROI analysis and make-vs-buy tradeoffs while running cross-functional teams and high-profile programs. Unusually for an executive, he also contributes to open-source software, having made focused backend enhancements to the popular Rust ORM diesel to support generated-column insert behaviors. He thrives in fast-paced, multi-project environments and is known for pragmatic, technical leadership that bridges engineering, certification and business stakeholders.
3 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Github Skills (9)
rust-macros10
proc-macro10
rust10
query-builder10
postgresql9
mysql8
testing7
sqlite7
sql6
Programming languages (1)
Github contributions (5)
diesel-rs/diesel
Nov 2023 - Apr 2024
A safe, extensible ORM and Query Builder for Rust
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 review, 2 PRs, 2 comments in 4 months
Contributions summary:Kirk primarily contributed to the `diesel-rs/diesel` repository by adding and modifying features related to the `diesel_derives` crate, which is likely a procedural macro for generating code. Their work involved adding a `skip_insertion` attribute for `Insertable` derive macros, which enables skipping fields during insertion. They also addressed review feedback, refined code, added a failing test for AliasedField, and added documentation for the `skip_insertion` attribute. This suggests a focus on enhancing the ORM's capabilities and addressing user needs for generated columns.
querymysqlrustsqlbuilder
formlogic-kirk/diesel
Nov 2023 - Apr 2024
A safe, extensible ORM and Query Builder for Rust
Contributions:9 pushes, 1 branch in 4 months
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