Summary
Nathan Rijksen is an engineering manager and hands-on technical leader with 14 years in software and a decade leading fully remote teams, currently based in Chilliwack, BC. He specializes in developer tooling, build infrastructure, and transforming single-expert bottlenecks into self-service platforms that scale across engineering organizations. At ActiveState he progressed from IC to people leader, shipping a universal cross-platform package manager, introducing dedicated QA to cut patch releases ~90%, and building diagnostic and AI/ML-driven automation to reduce troubleshooting effort. Nathan is pragmatic about hiring and mentorship—his teams have had zero turnover and produced multiple promotions into management—while also keeping close to the code by designing static analysis, LSP integration, and high-performance backend systems. He brings a track record of improving observability and release velocity simultaneously, and an unusual focus on turning complex diagnostic data into consumable products that enable broader engineering autonomy.
14 years of coding experience
12 years of employment as a software developer
Dutch, English, German, French