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Location:
Darmstadt, Germany
Nationality:
German
Languages:
German (Native)
English (Fluent)
Email:
nico.heidtke@gmx.de
Website:
https://scatterarrow.com
LinkedIn:
https://linkedin.com/in/nico-heidtke
GitHub:
https://github.com/nicoheidtke
Technical Skills
Primary
Experienced
Historical
Projects
Scatterarrow.com
Entirely hand-crafted personal blog and CV layouting tool. Using `straightshot`, my own static site generator.
Tech: Python, TypeScript, Go, Podman, Terraform
Miaudoku
Miaudoku is a relaxing, cat-themed, sudoku-style logic puzzle game featuring charming feline illustrations and grid-based challenges.
https://miaudoku.scatterarrow.com
Tech: Dart, Flutter, Python, Terraform
Publications & Patents
Growing Pains: Lessons from Seeing C++ Codebase Mature
Conference Talk •
Meeting C++ 2024 •
2024
Subspace projection of multi-dimensional unsupervised machine learning models
Patent Application •
US Patent Office •
2017
US20170147941A1 / WO2017090023A1
Anomaly detection for context-dependent data
Patent Application •
PCT/European Patent Office •
2016
PCT/EP2016/058628 / WO2016177566A1
Key Achievements
Global AI Hackathon 2017 Winner
2017
Global competition with 42 teams prototyping AI solutions for fraudulent-content detection.
Core Competencies
Agentic Engineering
Early ChatGPT adopter, and agentic workflows are a big part of how I work now. I lean on them for planning, design exploration, writing and reviewing code, documentation, and keeping delivery coordinated - and I automate the repetitive parts wherever I can.
Architecture & System Design
I design systems top-down, starting from behavior and APIs before implementation, and favor simple designs with clear boundaries. I've built high-availability, low-latency, and real-time analytics systems, and I teach this approach to my teams.
Best Practices and Mentoring
I learn and teach best practices for whatever I work with. I've mentored a lot of junior engineers into strong seniors.
Leadership and Management
I lead with clarity and trust, and mostly try to get out of the way so the team can do good work. I hire for ability and drive, and I pay attention to what people actually want from their careers.
Technical Product Leadership
As technical product owner in my current role, I turn product strategy and user feedback into what we actually build - owning the backlog, scope, and trade-offs, and shipping it even when ownership is unclear.
Cross-Domain Engineering
I've jumped between a lot of stacks and fields - Windows, Linux, web, mobile, cloud, and before that 3D graphics, game engines, and computer vision - usually working next to domain experts.
Certifications
Security Journey - Green Belt
securityjourney.com • 2025-07
Nico Heidtke
Engineering Manager, Staff Engineer & Technical Product Owner
I'm an engineering manager who still codes and owns product decisions. In practice that means running a team while staying in the architecture and doing hands-on work myself. At Exasol I own part of the platform. My main focus is the technical side of modernizing how it gets deployed - I triage the incoming feedback, decide where that work goes, and own the releases of the open-source pieces - but I also work on the platform features themselves and on developer experience. Before this I spent 20+ years in a lot of different fields: 3D graphics and game engines, computer vision, and more recently distributed databases and cloud. What interests me now is technical product ownership and platform work, and increasingly agentic workflows - I do a lot with them and like automating the repetitive parts of building software.
Exasol AG
Working on the platform, its deployment, and developer experience for Exasol, a distributed analytics database
Engineering Manager / Staff Software Engineer
2026-03— PresentEngineering manager and Staff-level engineer. Technical product owner for deployment, plus hands-on platform-feature and developer-experience work
- Grew and lead a team of 5-6 engineers, including their people management
- Own the technical direction for how Exasol gets deployed, and shipped self-service deployment for local setups and the cloud (AWS, Azure, Exoscale, STACKIT)
- Also work on the platform features themselves and on developer experience
- Delivered on tight deadlines while coordinating with product, QA, support, and leadership
- Designed the architecture so big requirement changes - cloud, local, developer experience - didn't force a rewrite
- Built agentic workflows into how the team plans, explores designs, writes and reviews code, documents, and coordinates delivery - automating the repetitive parts
Technologies: Go, Python, C++20, Linux, Distributed Systems, Cloud Architecture, AWS, Azure, Docker/Podman, Terraform, GitHub Actions
Team Lead / Senior Software Engineer
2025-03—2026-02Team leader and engineer in a team responsible for the cluster operating system and deployment tools
- Built and led a team doing Linux systems programming in distributed environments
- Developed and maintained a large legacy C++/Python/Go/Bash codebase
Technologies: Go, Python, C++20, Linux, Distributed Systems, AWS, Terraform
exocad GmbH
Software Engineering Manager
2021-01—2025-02Built and led a team of 6 developers modernizing DentalCAD, the leading 3D CAD software for dental restorations
- Modernized the practices, tools, and architecture on a ~900k-line C++ codebase with ~30 developers on it, and pulled the wider org's engineering standards up along the way
- Got the team collaborating better, which showed in both output and morale
- Modernization (C++03 to C++20), compiler porting (VS 2013 to Clang 18) and platform migration (Windows to Linux)
- Introduced new build systems (MSBuild -> CMake, Conan 2), SCM (SVN -> git), productivity tooling (clang-format, static analysis), CI/CD (Jenkins) and testing infrastructure (gtest)
- Established guidelines for code reviews, software security, 3rd-party dependency management and release processes
Technologies: C++20, CMake, Conan 2, git, C# 8, .NET 6, Windows, Linux
AGT International (Darmstadt, Germany)
Multiple roles spanning nearly a decade, working and travelling for very diverse projects
Team Lead / Development Architect
2015-08—2020-12Led development of multiple projects including Coach AI SDK, Professional Bull Riders system, and Media Streaming Platform
- Gave architecture and best-practice guidance on our multi-platform AR SDK to a team of up to 20 people
- Cooperatively developed C++/Kotlin computer vision and ML solutions out of research prototypes written in Python
- Developed sensor-based scoring system for the pro bull riding sport, replacing human judges with real-time analytics
- Designed and implemented high-availability backend systems for a hybrid on-site/cloud media processing platform
Technologies: C++17, Python 3, Kotlin/Native, Java, Elixir, Unity 3D/AR, iOS, Android, AWS, gstreamer
Senior Developer / Team Architect
2013-08—2015-07Software architect and developer for Analytics Runtime framework and Anomaly Detection SDK
- Designed and built a framework for structuring and hosting analytics solutions with big data integration (Spark, Hadoop, Kafka)
- Co-invented and developed multilingual anomaly detection SDK (Python, Java, C++) with ML models
- Co-developed novel computer vision solutions working directly with data scientists and computer vision experts
Technologies: Python, Java, C++, C#, WPF, Apache Spark, OpenCV, MongoDB, AWS
Developer
2011-08—2013-07Earlier role at AGT International, contributing to Smart City platform development and advanced tracking systems
- Developed various novel object and people tracking systems with computer vision capabilities
- Worked with camera systems, facial recognition, 3D geo-location
- Worked in cross-functional Scrum teams of 4-8 people
Technologies: C++, C#, WPF, OpenCV, dlib, FFmpeg, OpenGL
Developer
2008-08—2011-05
maila-push
Darmstadt, Germany
Designed and implemented Zone Engine - a specialized 3D game engine for interactive construction project experiences
- Designed and implemented a 3D/game engine from scratch
- Designed and built entity-component, scene graph, asset management, scripting, physics, input/control and animation systems
- Implemented the DirectX rendering subsystem and integrated Bullet Physics for real-time simulation
- Implemented multi-threading, custom allocators and low-level performance optimizations
- Created workflow tools using Qt for our production department
Technologies: C++, Lua, Game Engines, DirectX, QT, Bullet Physics
IT Specialist
2002-09—2008-06
Pitney Bowes Management Services GmbH
Viernheim, Germany
Inventor and primary developer of the Print Stream Machine - an automated document processing platform
- Invented and implemented an automation platform for ETL, document generation, printing, inserting, archiving and customer billing
- Developed client and server applications for Windows in Delphi 7 and C#
- Conducted user training and worked directly with customers on integration projects
Technologies: C++, C#, .NET, Delphi 7, MySQL
Education
IT Specialist – Application Development in Applied Computer Science
Karl-Kuebel-Schule
2002-09-2005-07
Bensheim, Germany
Location:
Darmstadt, Germany
Nationality:
German
Languages:
German (Native)
English (Fluent)
Email:
nico.heidtke@gmx.de
Website:
https://scatterarrow.com
LinkedIn:
https://linkedin.com/in/nico-heidtke
GitHub:
https://github.com/nicoheidtke
Technical Skills
Primary
Experienced
Historical
Projects
Scatterarrow.com
Entirely hand-crafted personal blog and CV layouting tool. Using `straightshot`, my own static site generator.
Tech: Python, TypeScript, Go, Podman, Terraform
Miaudoku
Miaudoku is a relaxing, cat-themed, sudoku-style logic puzzle game featuring charming feline illustrations and grid-based challenges.
https://miaudoku.scatterarrow.com
Tech: Dart, Flutter, Python, Terraform
Publications & Patents
Growing Pains: Lessons from Seeing C++ Codebase Mature
Conference Talk •
Meeting C++ 2024 •
2024
Subspace projection of multi-dimensional unsupervised machine learning models
Patent Application •
US Patent Office •
2017
US20170147941A1 / WO2017090023A1
Anomaly detection for context-dependent data
Patent Application •
PCT/European Patent Office •
2016
PCT/EP2016/058628 / WO2016177566A1
Nico Heidtke
Engineering Manager, Staff Engineer & Technical Product Owner
I'm an engineering manager who still codes and owns product decisions. In practice that means running a team while staying in the architecture and doing hands-on work myself. At Exasol I own part of the platform. My main focus is the technical side of modernizing how it gets deployed - I triage the incoming feedback, decide where that work goes, and own the releases of the open-source pieces - but I also work on the platform features themselves and on developer experience. Before this I spent 20+ years in a lot of different fields: 3D graphics and game engines, computer vision, and more recently distributed databases and cloud. What interests me now is technical product ownership and platform work, and increasingly agentic workflows - I do a lot with them and like automating the repetitive parts of building software.
Professional Experience
Exasol AG
Working on the platform, its deployment, and developer experience for Exasol, a distributed analytics database
Engineering Manager / Staff Software Engineer
2026-03— PresentEngineering manager and Staff-level engineer. Technical product owner for deployment, plus hands-on platform-feature and developer-experience work
- Grew and lead a team of 5-6 engineers, including their people management
- Own the technical direction for how Exasol gets deployed, and shipped self-service deployment for local setups and the cloud (AWS, Azure, Exoscale, STACKIT)
- Also work on the platform features themselves and on developer experience
- Delivered on tight deadlines while coordinating with product, QA, support, and leadership
- Designed the architecture so big requirement changes - cloud, local, developer experience - didn't force a rewrite
- Built agentic workflows into how the team plans, explores designs, writes and reviews code, documents, and coordinates delivery - automating the repetitive parts
Technologies: Go, Python, C++20, Linux, Distributed Systems, Cloud Architecture, AWS, Azure, Docker/Podman, Terraform, GitHub Actions
Team Lead / Senior Software Engineer
2025-03—2026-02Team leader and engineer in a team responsible for the cluster operating system and deployment tools
- Built and led a team doing Linux systems programming in distributed environments
- Developed and maintained a large legacy C++/Python/Go/Bash codebase
Technologies: Go, Python, C++20, Linux, Distributed Systems, AWS, Terraform
exocad GmbH
Software Engineering Manager
2021-01—2025-02Built and led a team of 6 developers modernizing DentalCAD, the leading 3D CAD software for dental restorations
- Modernized the practices, tools, and architecture on a ~900k-line C++ codebase with ~30 developers on it, and pulled the wider org's engineering standards up along the way
- Got the team collaborating better, which showed in both output and morale
- Modernization (C++03 to C++20), compiler porting (VS 2013 to Clang 18) and platform migration (Windows to Linux)
- Introduced new build systems (MSBuild -> CMake, Conan 2), SCM (SVN -> git), productivity tooling (clang-format, static analysis), CI/CD (Jenkins) and testing infrastructure (gtest)
- Established guidelines for code reviews, software security, 3rd-party dependency management and release processes
Technologies: C++20, CMake, Conan 2, git, C# 8, .NET 6, Windows, Linux
Key Achievements
Global AI Hackathon 2017 Winner
2017
Global competition with 42 teams prototyping AI solutions for fraudulent-content detection.
Core Competencies
Agentic Engineering
Early ChatGPT adopter, and agentic workflows are a big part of how I work now. I lean on them for planning, design exploration, writing and reviewing code, documentation, and keeping delivery coordinated - and I automate the repetitive parts wherever I can.
Architecture & System Design
I design systems top-down, starting from behavior and APIs before implementation, and favor simple designs with clear boundaries. I've built high-availability, low-latency, and real-time analytics systems, and I teach this approach to my teams.
Best Practices and Mentoring
I learn and teach best practices for whatever I work with. I've mentored a lot of junior engineers into strong seniors.
Leadership and Management
I lead with clarity and trust, and mostly try to get out of the way so the team can do good work. I hire for ability and drive, and I pay attention to what people actually want from their careers.
Technical Product Leadership
As technical product owner in my current role, I turn product strategy and user feedback into what we actually build - owning the backlog, scope, and trade-offs, and shipping it even when ownership is unclear.
Cross-Domain Engineering
I've jumped between a lot of stacks and fields - Windows, Linux, web, mobile, cloud, and before that 3D graphics, game engines, and computer vision - usually working next to domain experts.
Certifications
Security Journey - Green Belt
securityjourney.com • 2025-07
Professional Experience (continued)
AGT International (Darmstadt, Germany)
Multiple roles spanning nearly a decade, working and travelling for very diverse projects
Team Lead / Development Architect
2015-08—2020-12Led development of multiple projects including Coach AI SDK, Professional Bull Riders system, and Media Streaming Platform
- Gave architecture and best-practice guidance on our multi-platform AR SDK to a team of up to 20 people
- Cooperatively developed C++/Kotlin computer vision and ML solutions out of research prototypes written in Python
- Developed sensor-based scoring system for the pro bull riding sport, replacing human judges with real-time analytics
- Designed and implemented high-availability backend systems for a hybrid on-site/cloud media processing platform
Technologies: C++17, Python 3, Kotlin/Native, Java, Elixir, Unity 3D/AR, iOS, Android, AWS, gstreamer
Senior Developer / Team Architect
2013-08—2015-07Software architect and developer for Analytics Runtime framework and Anomaly Detection SDK
- Designed and built a framework for structuring and hosting analytics solutions with big data integration (Spark, Hadoop, Kafka)
- Co-invented and developed multilingual anomaly detection SDK (Python, Java, C++) with ML models
- Co-developed novel computer vision solutions working directly with data scientists and computer vision experts
Technologies: Python, Java, C++, C#, WPF, Apache Spark, OpenCV, MongoDB, AWS
Developer
2011-08—2013-07Earlier role at AGT International, contributing to Smart City platform development and advanced tracking systems
- Developed various novel object and people tracking systems with computer vision capabilities
- Worked with camera systems, facial recognition, 3D geo-location
- Worked in cross-functional Scrum teams of 4-8 people
Technologies: C++, C#, WPF, OpenCV, dlib, FFmpeg, OpenGL
Developer
2008-08—2011-05
maila-push
Darmstadt, Germany
Designed and implemented Zone Engine - a specialized 3D game engine for interactive construction project experiences
- Designed and implemented a 3D/game engine from scratch
- Designed and built entity-component, scene graph, asset management, scripting, physics, input/control and animation systems
- Implemented the DirectX rendering subsystem and integrated Bullet Physics for real-time simulation
- Implemented multi-threading, custom allocators and low-level performance optimizations
- Created workflow tools using Qt for our production department
Technologies: C++, Lua, Game Engines, DirectX, QT, Bullet Physics
IT Specialist
2002-09—2008-06
Pitney Bowes Management Services GmbH
Viernheim, Germany
Inventor and primary developer of the Print Stream Machine - an automated document processing platform
- Invented and implemented an automation platform for ETL, document generation, printing, inserting, archiving and customer billing
- Developed client and server applications for Windows in Delphi 7 and C#
- Conducted user training and worked directly with customers on integration projects
Technologies: C++, C#, .NET, Delphi 7, MySQL
Education
IT Specialist – Application Development in Applied Computer Science
Karl-Kuebel-Schule
2002-09-2005-07
Bensheim, Germany
Location:
Darmstadt, Germany
Nationality:
German
Languages:
German (Native)
English (Fluent)
Nico Heidtke
Engineering Manager, Staff Engineer & Technical Product Owner
I'm an engineering manager who still codes and owns product decisions. In practice that means running a team while staying in the architecture and doing hands-on work myself. At Exasol I own part of the platform. My main focus is the technical side of modernizing how it gets deployed - I triage the incoming feedback, decide where that work goes, and own the releases of the open-source pieces - but I also work on the platform features themselves and on developer experience. Before this I spent 20+ years in a lot of different fields: 3D graphics and game engines, computer vision, and more recently distributed databases and cloud. What interests me now is technical product ownership and platform work, and increasingly agentic workflows - I do a lot with them and like automating the repetitive parts of building software.
Email:
nico.heidtke@gmx.de
Website:
https://scatterarrow.com
LinkedIn:
https://linkedin.com/in/nico-heidtke
GitHub:
https://github.com/nicoheidtke
Technical Skills
Primary
Experienced
Historical
Exasol AG
Working on the platform, its deployment, and developer experience for Exasol, a distributed analytics database
Engineering Manager / Staff Software Engineer
2026-03— PresentEngineering manager and Staff-level engineer. Technical product owner for deployment, plus hands-on platform-feature and developer-experience work
- Grew and lead a team of 5-6 engineers, including their people management
- Own the technical direction for how Exasol gets deployed, and shipped self-service deployment for local setups and the cloud (AWS, Azure, Exoscale, STACKIT)
- Also work on the platform features themselves and on developer experience
- Delivered on tight deadlines while coordinating with product, QA, support, and leadership
- Designed the architecture so big requirement changes - cloud, local, developer experience - didn't force a rewrite
- Built agentic workflows into how the team plans, explores designs, writes and reviews code, documents, and coordinates delivery - automating the repetitive parts
Technologies: Go, Python, C++20, Linux, Distributed Systems, Cloud Architecture, AWS, Azure, Docker/Podman, Terraform, GitHub Actions
Team Lead / Senior Software Engineer
2025-03—2026-02Team leader and engineer in a team responsible for the cluster operating system and deployment tools
- Built and led a team doing Linux systems programming in distributed environments
- Developed and maintained a large legacy C++/Python/Go/Bash codebase
Technologies: Go, Python, C++20, Linux, Distributed Systems, AWS, Terraform
exocad GmbH
Software Engineering Manager
2021-01—2025-02Built and led a team of 6 developers modernizing DentalCAD, the leading 3D CAD software for dental restorations
- Modernized the practices, tools, and architecture on a ~900k-line C++ codebase with ~30 developers on it, and pulled the wider org's engineering standards up along the way
- Got the team collaborating better, which showed in both output and morale
- Modernization (C++03 to C++20), compiler porting (VS 2013 to Clang 18) and platform migration (Windows to Linux)
- Introduced new build systems (MSBuild -> CMake, Conan 2), SCM (SVN -> git), productivity tooling (clang-format, static analysis), CI/CD (Jenkins) and testing infrastructure (gtest)
- Established guidelines for code reviews, software security, 3rd-party dependency management and release processes
Technologies: C++20, CMake, Conan 2, git, C# 8, .NET 6, Windows, Linux
AGT International (Darmstadt, Germany)
Multiple roles spanning nearly a decade, working and travelling for very diverse projects
Team Lead / Development Architect
2015-08—2020-12Led development of multiple projects including Coach AI SDK, Professional Bull Riders system, and Media Streaming Platform
- Gave architecture and best-practice guidance on our multi-platform AR SDK to a team of up to 20 people
- Cooperatively developed C++/Kotlin computer vision and ML solutions out of research prototypes written in Python
- Developed sensor-based scoring system for the pro bull riding sport, replacing human judges with real-time analytics
- Designed and implemented high-availability backend systems for a hybrid on-site/cloud media processing platform
Technologies: C++17, Python 3, Kotlin/Native, Java, Elixir, Unity 3D/AR, iOS, Android, AWS, gstreamer
Senior Developer / Team Architect
2013-08—2015-07Software architect and developer for Analytics Runtime framework and Anomaly Detection SDK
- Designed and built a framework for structuring and hosting analytics solutions with big data integration (Spark, Hadoop, Kafka)
- Co-invented and developed multilingual anomaly detection SDK (Python, Java, C++) with ML models
- Co-developed novel computer vision solutions working directly with data scientists and computer vision experts
Technologies: Python, Java, C++, C#, WPF, Apache Spark, OpenCV, MongoDB, AWS
Developer
2011-08—2013-07Earlier role at AGT International, contributing to Smart City platform development and advanced tracking systems
- Developed various novel object and people tracking systems with computer vision capabilities
- Worked with camera systems, facial recognition, 3D geo-location
- Worked in cross-functional Scrum teams of 4-8 people
Technologies: C++, C#, WPF, OpenCV, dlib, FFmpeg, OpenGL
Developer
2008-08—2011-05
maila-push
Darmstadt, Germany
Designed and implemented Zone Engine - a specialized 3D game engine for interactive construction project experiences
- Designed and implemented a 3D/game engine from scratch
- Designed and built entity-component, scene graph, asset management, scripting, physics, input/control and animation systems
- Implemented the DirectX rendering subsystem and integrated Bullet Physics for real-time simulation
- Implemented multi-threading, custom allocators and low-level performance optimizations
- Created workflow tools using Qt for our production department
Technologies: C++, Lua, Game Engines, DirectX, QT, Bullet Physics
IT Specialist
2002-09—2008-06
Pitney Bowes Management Services GmbH
Viernheim, Germany
Inventor and primary developer of the Print Stream Machine - an automated document processing platform
- Invented and implemented an automation platform for ETL, document generation, printing, inserting, archiving and customer billing
- Developed client and server applications for Windows in Delphi 7 and C#
- Conducted user training and worked directly with customers on integration projects
Technologies: C++, C#, .NET, Delphi 7, MySQL
Projects
Scatterarrow.com
Entirely hand-crafted personal blog and CV layouting tool. Using `straightshot`, my own static site generator.
Tech: Python, TypeScript, Go, Podman, Terraform
Miaudoku
Miaudoku is a relaxing, cat-themed, sudoku-style logic puzzle game featuring charming feline illustrations and grid-based challenges.
https://miaudoku.scatterarrow.com
Tech: Dart, Flutter, Python, Terraform
Publications & Patents
Growing Pains: Lessons from Seeing C++ Codebase Mature
Conference Talk •
Meeting C++ 2024 •
2024
Subspace projection of multi-dimensional unsupervised machine learning models
Patent Application •
US Patent Office •
2017
US20170147941A1 / WO2017090023A1
Anomaly detection for context-dependent data
Patent Application •
PCT/European Patent Office •
2016
PCT/EP2016/058628 / WO2016177566A1
Key Achievements
Global AI Hackathon 2017 Winner
2017
Global competition with 42 teams prototyping AI solutions for fraudulent-content detection.
Certifications
Security Journey - Green Belt
securityjourney.com • 2025-07
Core Competencies
Agentic Engineering
Early ChatGPT adopter, and agentic workflows are a big part of how I work now. I lean on them for planning, design exploration, writing and reviewing code, documentation, and keeping delivery coordinated - and I automate the repetitive parts wherever I can.
Architecture & System Design
I design systems top-down, starting from behavior and APIs before implementation, and favor simple designs with clear boundaries. I've built high-availability, low-latency, and real-time analytics systems, and I teach this approach to my teams.
Best Practices and Mentoring
I learn and teach best practices for whatever I work with. I've mentored a lot of junior engineers into strong seniors.
Leadership and Management
I lead with clarity and trust, and mostly try to get out of the way so the team can do good work. I hire for ability and drive, and I pay attention to what people actually want from their careers.
Technical Product Leadership
As technical product owner in my current role, I turn product strategy and user feedback into what we actually build - owning the backlog, scope, and trade-offs, and shipping it even when ownership is unclear.
Cross-Domain Engineering
I've jumped between a lot of stacks and fields - Windows, Linux, web, mobile, cloud, and before that 3D graphics, game engines, and computer vision - usually working next to domain experts.
Education
IT Specialist – Application Development in Applied Computer Science
Karl-Kuebel-Schule
2002-09-2005-07
Bensheim, Germany