Resumé

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James Nicholson's CV

Recent Highlights

Winner of the Qualcomm/Meta ExecuTorch Edge AI Hackathon — Built mobile app with on-device Meta Llama 1B running on Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for voice-guided lab protocols (October 2025)

Experience

Harvard Chan School of Public Health, Senior Software Engineer

  • Sept 2019 – present
  • Served as technical lead on a multi-year flagship website redesign, facilitating engineering office hours, conducting developer workshops, and creating comprehensive technical documentation for environment setup and code deployment.
  • Led developer onboarding and enablement through pair programming sessions and documentation, successfully mentoring two developers to become productive contributors on a high-profile cross-functional project.
  • Created and maintained external and internal technical documentation including developer guides, API integration tutorials, and wiki content for enterprise platforms.
  • Designed and implemented an authentication/authorization layer integrating with SAML2 identity providers, demonstrating expertise in security architecture and developer-facing infrastructure.
  • Led a multi-month User Acceptance Testing process coordinating 12+ stakeholders across departments, managing 200+ test cases and 100+ bug discoveries with clear communication to technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Developed an automated faculty profile generation application using PHP, JavaScript, and MySQL, engaging with diverse stakeholders including faculty, communications, and academic affairs.
  • Implemented Emma email marketing platform integration (SSO, DKIM, contact sync), creating thorough documentation and enabling adoption across multiple organizational sub-accounts.
  • Built automation tools and background processes for user management and content archiving, reducing operational overhead and improving platform reliability.
  • Completed a Master's Degree in Software Engineering from Harvard while working full-time, with thesis on automated information extraction using Meta's Llama LLM API.

Stanford Graduate School of Business, IT Systems Analyst

  • Sept 2015 – Sept 2019
  • Developed and maintained a service request platform with multiple backend iterations, automating scheduling, metadata tracking, and integration with class capture systems, improving user engagement and saving hundreds of hours annually.
  • Built automation and scripting tools (Python, Google Apps Script) that streamlined workflows and improved system reliability for technical and non-technical users.
  • Completed Crestron certifications (Digital Media 4K Engineer, Programming 101, Smart Graphics) enabling advanced hardware-software integrations.
  • Partnered with hardware vendors to integrate cloud-based class capture systems, supporting automated scheduling and real-time monitoring.
  • Created Tableau dashboards from service platform data, enabling management to track usage metrics and improve decision-making through data visualization.
  • Led peer cross-training sessions to share technical knowledge and reduce single points of failure across the team.
  • Supported high-visibility events including MBA Admissions webinars (400+ registrants) and global distance learning programs, ensuring seamless delivery to diverse technical audiences.

Education

University of Colorado Boulder, BS in Journalism

Harvard Extension School, MS in Software Engineering

  • Thesis: Automated information extraction using a large language model, building a distributed multi-threaded pipeline with Python and Meta's Llama API, accelerating extraction by 20x in collaboration with Pfizer scientists.
  • Completed advanced coursework in Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Services (AWS), Operating Systems (C programming), Robotics/Autonomous Vehicles/Drones, Scala for Big Data Systems, Mathematical Statistics, and Cryptography.

Projects

Information Extraction via Large Language Model (HECTRE)

  • Developed a web and CLI application leveraging LLMs and parallel processing to extract structured clinical trial data from PDFs, reducing manual processing from months to minutes.
  • https://nicholsonjf.com/hectre/

Multi-Class Image Classification: Transfer Learning vs. Standalone CNNs

  • Compared transfer learning against standalone CNNs for multi-class classification using deep learning techniques; implemented with Python, TensorFlow/Keras, and pandas.
  • https://nicholsonjf.com/transfer-learning/

Predicting Flight Delays

Using Akka Streams to Process MBTA Predictions

  • Built a Scala/Akka Streams pipeline consuming real-time transit data, demonstrating reactive programming, backpressure handling, and stream processing for big data applications.
  • https://nicholsonjf.com/mbta-arrivals/

Implementation and Comparison of Navigation Algorithms

  • Implemented and benchmarked A*, Dijkstra's, and other pathfinding algorithms for robotics and autonomous vehicle contexts, analyzing algorithmic complexity and performance tradeoffs.
  • https://nicholsonjf.com/navigation-algorithms/

Skills

  • AI & Machine Learning: Edge AI (ExecuTorch), Local AI (LM Studio), AI-assisted development, Data preprocessing (Pandas), Model development and evaluation (Keras, Scikit-learn)
  • Developer Relations & Content: Technical documentation, Developer onboarding, Workshop facilitation, Cross-functional collaboration, Stakeholder engagement, Technical presentations
  • Languages & Frameworks: Python, JavaScript, C, Scala, PHP, MySQL, React Native
  • Data & Infrastructure: AWS, Postgres, Redis, Akka Streams, Docker, GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines
  • Systems & Architecture: System design, Distributed systems, Backend APIs, API integration, Observability, Scalability, Agile methodology