Koleman Nix — software engineer and engineering leader. Richmond, VA.
github · x · linkedin · youtube
Experience
Pattern Data — CTO
2024–present
Pattern Data is a legal tech platform specializing in medical record extraction and AI-assisted case review and analysis.
- Led product and engineering while growing the company from 3 to 35 employees
- Led the adaptation of the product to the LLM revolution, architecting and implementing Pattern AutoReview and Pattern Agent in partnership with OpenAI, with over 1 trillion tokens processed
- Created Pattern Scripts, allowing dozens of analytics developers to deliver complex bespoke solutions across many projects by “programming” the Pattern Data platform
- Established codebases whose structure and quality survived dozens of pairs of hands on keyboard over 6+ years
- Functioned as a hands-on CTO in programming, design, architecture, process, mentorship, and operations
Pattern Data — Founding Engineer / VP Engineering
2020–2024 · remote
- Led core platform development from concept to profitable business
- Built and maintained the core backend platform using Scala, Postgres, Elasticsearch, and AWS, fulfilling all uptime and security requirements
Veritas School — Special Faculty, Computer Science
2019–2020 · Richmond, VA
- Taught the school’s first AP Computer Science offering; developed a curriculum in Scala focused on CS foundations and data representation, including an image processing SDK and a 2D game engine
- Successfully instilled a love of programming in 1 of my 16 students, who is now a software engineer
LiveSafe — Lead Software Engineer
2016–2020 · Arlington, VA
- Built a fully distributed microservice architecture using Scala, Akka, Kubernetes, Kafka, and Cassandra
- Technical lead for integration offerings (webhooks, RSS, SCIMv2)
- Grew the team by conducting interviews and authoring our technical phone screen scripts and candidate coding projects; key mediator and team-member
Helme — Founder, Engineer
2014–2016 · Charlottesville, VA (student)
Financial planning and budgeting platform built in full-stack Clojure, integrated with QuickBooks, that allowed decision makers to visualize and plan budgetary scenarios.
Projects
k1 — a programming language and fast compiler
k1 is a fully-featured and industrially viable programming language and compiler with a host of modern and innovative high-level features and the low-level control and performance of C
I’ve documented the development process, in a very low-effort and raw manner, on youtube.
- Full compile-time execution enabled by a custom bytecode and VM
- Full typeclass featureset supporting specialization, blanket implementations, and microsecond-scale inference solves
- Parity with most of Rust’s zero-cost abstractions
- reflection and metaprogramming powered by CTE
Scala open source
Contributions to ZIO, typo, enumeratum, tapir, and spack (msgpack for Scala).
Education
University of Virginia — B.S. Computer Science
2012–2016
- Teaching and research assistant to Prof. Kevin Sullivan, specializing in software correctness, type theory, and proof theory (Coq, Idris)
- Darden School of Business incubator (iLab), class of 2016, and Entrepreneurship Cup winner for Helme
- Paper: Value Assurance Cases — Kevin Sullivan, Koleman Nix, Ke Dou, Chong Tang
Oregon Programming Languages Summer School
2016
Focused on type systems, proof assistants, and the Curry–Howard correspondence.
Specialties
Performance and optimization · type systems and programming languages · maintainability analysis · achieving simplicity · debugging · cost-benefit analysis · communication and mediation · mentorship and teaching
Husband, and father of two girls. Flow state addict. Collegiate League of Legends player & captain; Age of Empires IV top-ladder player. Brittany spaniel owner. Sometimes-programming-youtuber.
These days my top hobbies are probably programming, coffee tasting and brewing, and cooking