About·Articles·Projects

Me

Hi, I'm Nikos Oikonomou

Software Engineer with 10+ years building scalable backend systems and distributed platforms. Passionate about IoT and cloud infrastructure. Currently VP of Engineering at Kariera Group, focused on technical strategy and team excellence.

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Work Experience

Jan. 2025 - Present (1 year 2 months)
VP of Engineering @ Kariera Group
HR Solutions
Led the shift from individual technical contribution to organizational leadership, overseeing multiple squads, driving engineering vision, and aligning technical strategy with product and business goals.
Key Highlights
- Formed a cross-squad leadership structure by empowering senior engineers as Tech Leads and establishing a third innovation-focused team with architectural oversight responsibilities, overseeing 3 engineering squads and 15+ developers.
- Collaborated closely with Product and Design leadership to align roadmap priorities with long-term technical strategy, balancing speed, maintainability, and scalability across multiple high-impact projects.
Nov. 2023 - Jan. 2025 (1 year 2 months)
Principal Engineer
Stepped back from direct team leadership to scale the organization, building a second team from the ground up while keeping a cross-team focus on code quality, platform evolution, and service reliability.
Key Highlights
- Established best practice guidelines (GitOps, naming conventions, code structure) for the engineering team and collaborated with tech leads to maintain a unified architecture and resolve workflow challenges.
- Led recruiting tech task preparation and managed hiring to expand the team.
- Oversaw the modernization of internal systems and accelerated the adoption of security, SEO, and AI-related initiatives across the platform.
Jul. 2022 - Nov. 2023 (1 year 3 months)
Tech Lead
Led backend service development and architecture, translating business requirements into technical specifications while guiding the team toward a scalable and reliable platform.
Key Highlights
- Mentored team members to take on more responsibility, emphasizing code reviews and constructive feedback for team growth.
- Created technical documentation for KPI-critical features to support productive review and evaluation cycles for upcoming functionalities.
Jan. 2022 - Jul. 2022 (6 months)
Senior Backend Engineer
Owned the most challenging and undefined areas of product development, delivering mission-critical features and third-party integrations quickly and efficiently.
Key Highlights
- Led mission-critical feature development, managing tight deadlines and third-party integration.
- Built core search functionality using Azure Cognitive Search developed a fair scoring system, established regression testing, and documented thoroughly for clarity.
Mar. 2021 - Jan. 2022 (10 months)
Director of Engineering @ Centaur Analytics
AgTech IoT & Analytics
Led the R&D department, scaling the team and streamlining product development workflows. Collaborated with DevOps to modernize the cloud stack, migrating to a provider-managed Kubernetes cluster for improved stability and observability.
Key Highlights
- Orchestrated Product Development and the department's workflow.
- Led the hiring process, added team members, closely mentored them, assisted with solution design, and reviewed their work.
- Modernized cloud infrastructure by upgrading technology stack and migrating from self-managed to provider-managed Kubernetes cluster for improved stability and monitoring.
Sep. 2018 - Mar. 2021 (2 years 6 months)
Senior Software Engineer
Led Centaur's embedded team while supporting the web team, building end-to-end solutions from firmware to client applications. Managed the backlog, coordinated the team, and directly engaged with field engineers and clients to resolve issues.
Key Highlights
- Refactored the initial back-end API from monolith to microservices architecture, learning from mistakes to build a scalable and stable distributed system.
- Led the development of a new IoT platform, including low-level Linux system development, sensor management, and device-to-device communication (e.g., MQTT, 802.15.4).
- Took initiatives to assist the DevOps team, upgraded third-party tools (e.g., Grafana, Kibana, Prometheus), and migrated the platform from a self-managed K8S cluster (AWS+Kops) to EKS.
Sep. 2016 - Sep. 2018 (2 years)
Software Engineer
Joined as a full-stack developer focused on backend architecture and microservices migration. Expanded into IoT device development after the first year, quickly taking ownership of all software and firmware layers for IP-enabled devices.
Key Highlights
- Designed and developed software from scratch for both back-end and front-end.
- Built complete CI/CD procedures from scratch using Gitlab CI and Bash, integrating complex build systems (e.g. Yocto).
- Developed end-to-end solutions by taking on entire features to relieve the team during critical deadlines.
Jul. 2016 - Sep. 2016 (2 months)
Software Engineer Intern
Collaborated with the web team on frontend and backend tasks, improving codebase testability, stability, and performance.

Education

Sep. 2012 - Sep. 2018
M.Sc. @ University of Thessaly
Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Specialized in embedded systems and wireless sensor networks, building on a foundation of low-level programming (POSIX) and distributed systems. This background shaped my approach to IoT platforms and scalable software architecture.

Hobbies

Traveling (21 of 195)

Exploring diverse cultures and landscapes across Europe and North America.

Gaming

Passionate about challenging RPGs and immersive storytelling experiences.

Favorite Genre

RPGs

Favorite Game

Dark Souls 1

Favorite Company

FromSoftware

Most Played Game

Skyrim

Cooking

As a Greek, I'm well-versed in Mediterranean cuisine, but my true passion lies in Italian cooking, especially crafting traditional dishes from scratch.

Writing

Sharing insights on software engineering, leadership, and technology through technical articles.