Summary
Nate Pickens is a California-based software engineer with 13 years of hands-on experience building product-grade systems from startup roots to independent consulting. A founding engineer at Looker, he helped design core product infrastructure and scale the company through rapid growth, then transitioned to independent software work in 2018 while also serving as an EMT—bringing a pragmatic, user-focused mindset and calm under pressure. His technical background spans iOS, Ruby/Rails, MySQL, Redis, NGINX, and systems automation, with early work on automated publishing and ad-bidding tools that reflect a knack for integrating services and operational ownership. Nate combines product intuition from his PM stint with deep engineering experience, making him equally comfortable sketching requirements and shipping resilient backend and mobile features.
13 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
University of California Santa Cruz
Computer Science, Computer Science at Cabrillo College