My name is Nick Stradford, and I'm a Senior Software Engineer focused on AI products, platform engineering, and observability systems.

I currently build internal developer tooling and observability systems at Apple, where I work on large-scale multi-tenant platforms that support engineering workflows across thousands of Kubernetes namespaces and international data center environments.

Outside of my day-to-day work, I build AI-native SaaS products and developer tools, with a strong focus on:

  • LLM applications
  • Agent-based systems
  • RAG + vector search
  • Workflow automation
  • Distributed systems
  • Developer experience

I enjoy working at the intersection of deep systems thinking and product engineering, where the challenge is not just making something work, but making it scalable, maintainable, and enjoyable for people to use.

I'm based in Dallas, Texas, and have spent over a decade building software across cloud infrastructure, internal platforms, SaaS products, and AI-driven applications.

Interests

I'm especially interested in AI-native software, model inference systems, developer tooling, distributed databases, and the future of autonomous software workflows.

A long-term personal goal of mine is to build a software company around products that meaningfully improve how people create, learn, and work.

Lately, much of my learning has centered around:

  • LLM inference and optimization
  • C++ systems programming
  • Vector databases and retrieval systems
  • Multi-tenant SaaS architecture
  • Agentic workflows
  • Workflow orchestration platforms

I'm most energized by projects that combine hard engineering problems with real product leverage.

Education

I hold a B.S. in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics from the University of North Texas, along with an M.S. in Technology Commercialization from The University of Texas.

That combination of technical depth and product commercialization continues to shape how I build software: balancing systems rigor, product usability, and long-term business viability.

What I'm Building

  • Imaginate — AI vibe coding platform that generates full web apps from a prompt
  • Insight Flow — YouTube transcription and RAG chat with vector search
  • Autonix — Visual workflow automation platform with AI integrations
  • LLM Engine — C++23 inference engine built from scratch