Nick DiZazzo
Software Engineer
I'm passionate about technology and how it impacts our lives, from the hardware powering it, all the way to the experiences you have while using it.
Intro
What I'm all about
I was 6 years old when I disassembled my first computer and since then, I've known that I love everything about technology. I'm intently focused on unravelling how it works, what it can do, and where it can take us in the future.
I have a strong drive to work together with my colleagues in solving technical challenges and a natural curiosity to figure out how something works. I keep an open attitude towards learning and stay humble with the things I don't yet know.
Open-source Projects
Helping other developers
Biome
Biome helps organize and manage sets of runtime variables for multiple environments in macOS, iOS, tvOS, and watchOS.
SwiftChain
SwiftChain is a educational framework I used to explain implementation details of a blockchain, written in Swift.
Stellar Wallet
Primary contributor & maintainer of BlockEQ's iOS Wallet, helping people take back control of their finances with Stellar.
Expertise
What I do best
01
Tech Leadership
Translating rough ideas & visions into the technical roadmaps they need in order to be successful. I've helped plan, build tech teams, and have led engineers through tough development challenges.
02
System Architecture
Designing, developing, and documenting the components of systems for mobile applications, closed and open-source frameworks, and back-end services.
03
Mobile Development
Specializing in mobile development while building performant and delightful apps in iOS. Crypto wallets, AR experiments, contact data synchronization, and smart-home integrations are some notable experiences I've worked on.
04
Back-end Development
Building back-end systems for collecting and aggregating analytics data, APIs for servicing web and mobile applications, as well as complex multi-container applications.
05
Swift
Advanced level in writing Swift code for clients, servers, or the command line. I follow Swift development proposals very closely, and have also helped identify improvements to Swift.
06
Objective-C / C++ / C
Strongly experienced in C-family programming languages - requiring thorough understanding of the deployment platform, they reward you with the maximum amount of performance and flexibility.
Experience
What I've done
In late 2018, our small 5-person startup, BlockEQ, was acquired by Coinsquare. Since then, we've acquired another company named StellarX and have been working hard to integrate Stellar into Coinsquare's technology stack.
March 2019 – Present
Coinsquare
Principal iOS Engineer
Toronto, ON
Led development for the company's native iOS projects (internal / external), build systems, and design patterns.
Worked closely with our engineering director to hire and manage a team of intermediate & senior mobile developers.
Collaborated with back-end teams to rebuild microservices for many different system areas and devised strategies to reduce our front-end client workload by unifying them with shared GraphQL queries.
Advised product teams on best-practices for mobile features, designs, and implementation.
2018 - March 2019
Block Equity / StellarX
Principal iOS Engineer (Multiple Roles)
Defined how BlockEQ built mobile products that customers would enjoy using and took BlockEQ's App Store presence to the next level by providing elegant designs, and published technical articles.
Led development efforts to build native mobile apps for StellarX, a decentralized exchange for the Stellar ecosystem.
Devised strategies to manage secure cryptocurrency data: encryption for data at rest and in motion.
Frequently contributed to open-source projects which support Stellar development, and collaborated with SDF members to encourage developer adoption.
2015 – 2018
TWG
Tech Lead / Senior Mobile Engineer
Toronto, ON
Led technical initiatives for client projects; worked closely with product managers to estimate technical scope and tasks.
Provided development and technical guidance for startups - helped evolve product visions and scale their development teams.
Led development teams in numerous mobile projects and helped hire & onboard new developers to the company.
Developed and maintained in-house frameworks to expedite project ramp-up and development time.
2013 – 2015
Metroland Media
Mobile Developer
Toronto, ON
Repurposed a REST API that aggregated data from several legacy MySQL databases, and integrated it with new data sources to maintain compatibility with existing mobile apps.
Coordinated development on revamping WagJag mobile app, using Appcelerator as an application development framework.
2012 – 2013
GLU Mobile
Game Programmer
Toronto, ON
Released several game titles, including Zombies Ate My Friends, Knights of Puzzelot, and Campers!
Lead engineer on Zombies Ate My Friends, which was prominently featured on Apple's iOS App Store and Google Play.
Developed and extended a custom multi-platform game engine using OpenGL ES (iOS, Android, and OSX).
Built countless tools and exporters for artists & designers to manipulate game data.
2011 – 2012
Gameloft
Game Programmer
Toronto, ON
Released two game titles, with one being featured by Apple on the app store.
Developed game-play mechanics, networking and social components for Urban Crime, and UNO & Friends.
Created an extensible 2D animation system for simple object motion.
2009 – 2010
IBM Canada Ltd.
DB2 Cloud Developer
Toronto, ON
Worked on IBM's Database as a Service (DBaaS) team to help develop a cloud-based ecosystem for DB2 - a proof of concept to provision multi-node databases with DB2 PureScale.
Investigated new hardware-based technology delivery platforms for the DBaaS project.
2009 – 2009
IBM Canada Ltd.
DB2 Application Developer
Toronto, ON
Implemented scalability changes to support parallel execution across hundreds of database nodes.
Reduced report output transmission size for large database health reports by up to 50%.
2007 – 2008
IBM Canada Ltd.
DB2 Technologist
Toronto, ON
Designed and developed an extensible, highly scalable, distributed P2P framework allowing the automation of thousands of remote machines.
Additional system capabilities included remote monitoring of systems, system control, application control, batch execution of commands to manage clustered machines, etc.
The framework had successful applications at Information on Demand in Las Vegas, 2007, SAP Tech. Ed. Orlando, 2008 and Information on Demand Europe, 2008.
Education
2005 – 2011
Western University
B.Sc. Specialization Computer Science
Minor Game Development
London, ON
Internship: Selected for the Science Internship program and hired by IBM Canada.
Extra Curricular: Vice President of External Affairs, Computer Science Student Society.