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r-01

the working record

Olga Nikulina

Los Angeles, CA

Professional Summary

Team Lead and senior full-stack engineer with 10+ years of experience building SaaS and eCommerce products, with a career path that progressed from QA engineering into software development and technical leadership.

Lead remote engineering teams, ship end-to-end product initiatives, and work across frontend, backend, and data systems using React, TypeScript, Node.js, Go, Java, BigQuery, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL.

Strong at turning ambiguous product ideas into concrete execution plans by collaborating with product, design, QA, and client-facing partners to understand what users actually need, not just what they initially ask for.

Recent work includes leading delivery of collaborative retail planning features, AI-assisted product initiatives, and architecture modernization efforts such as Rollup v2, which introduced an MFE- and SQLite-based approach for a faster, more interactive planning experience inspired by modern browser-native patterns.

Professional Experience

NuORDER by Lightspeed

Team Lead / Senior Software Engineer
October 2022 – Present

  • Lead a remote team of 7 engineers building full-stack features for a SaaS eCommerce platform using React, TypeScript, Go, Node.js, Java, BigQuery, and MongoDB, while aligning day-to-day execution with business priorities and release timelines.
  • Increased sprint completion rate to 95% by coaching the team to break complex initiatives into testable tickets, encouraging proactive technical research, and improving the quality of planning before implementation began.
  • Operate as a player-coach: contribute hands-on code across the stack while also unblocking engineers, shaping technical direction, and helping the team execute with more consistency and ownership.
  • Partner closely with product managers, designers, QA, and customer-facing stakeholders to refine feature scope, challenge vague requirements, and translate high-level asks into practical, shippable solutions.
  • Known for helping teams and stakeholders get to the real problem behind a request, especially when client asks are underspecified or initially framed in a way that obscures the underlying need.
  • Delivered multiple initiatives from idea to production, including an AI Chat Assistant, Assortment Reporting, and Assortment to Order Commit.
  • Contributed hands-on to features used by hundreds of users working collaboratively on the platform, balancing delivery speed with maintainability and product quality.
  • Helped shape work across PM, QA, and engineering by pushing for clearer acceptance criteria, tighter execution loops, and a more pragmatic view of what creates real customer value.

Selected highlights

  • Supported the evolution of Rollup v2, a redesign of retail planning workflows built around MFE architecture and SQLite, enabling a lower-latency and more interactive user experience for rollup-based planning.
  • Worked on product direction and technical framing for rollups in a way that connected engineering tradeoffs to retailer usability and performance expectations, including communication with PM and client-facing stakeholders around what improvements mattered most.
  • Drew inspiration from broader modern frontend patterns, including Notion’s browser-speed work with SQLite, when thinking through performant client-side interaction models.

NuORDER

Software Engineer
December 2017 – October 2022

  • Built reusable React components using hooks, higher-order components, and the Context API to improve consistency and speed of frontend development.
  • Strengthened the TypeScript codebase by introducing more expressive generics and interfaces, improving type safety and maintainability across the application.
  • Helped break apart and refactor a legacy monolith into a Lerna-based monorepo, improving modularity and reducing deployment time by 20%.
  • Developed REST APIs using Node.js and Express with MongoDB and PostgreSQL, contributing across both application logic and data layers.
  • Grew into a trusted full-stack engineer who could move between frontend implementation, backend services, and technical problem-solving as product scope became more complex.

NuORDER

Lead Automation QA
March 2015 – December 2017

  • Rebuilt the UI testing framework from Nightwatch to Cypress, resulting in more robust and maintainable automated test coverage.
  • Worked closely with developers to ensure Jira tickets contained the right technical detail for efficient debugging and delivery.
  • Built a strong quality and testability mindset that continued into later engineering and leadership roles, especially in cross-functional collaboration with QA during feature delivery.

Eccentex

QA Engineer
September 2012 – March 2015

  • Developed a regression testing framework for the company’s SaaS platform using Selenium and Java.
  • Built the technical foundation that later supported a transition from QA into full-stack product engineering and team leadership.

Skills

Leadership & Delivery
Engineering leadership, team coaching, cross-functional collaboration, roadmap execution, feature delivery, technical scoping, ambiguity reduction, quality-minded development.

Frontend
React, TypeScript, JavaScript (ES6+), reusable component architecture, modern web application development, MFE-based UI architecture.

Backend & APIs
Node.js, REST API development, Go, Java, service integration, backend feature development.

Data & Infrastructure
PostgreSQL, MongoDB, BigQuery, Google Cloud, SQLite, data-heavy SaaS workflows, performance-focused architecture.

Quality & Process
Automation strategy, Cypress, Jira, testability, release collaboration, engineering process improvement.

Education

  • Georgia Tech — Master of Science in Computer Science, 2025–present
  • Santa Monica College — Associate of Science in Computer Programming, 2010–2012
  • UCLA — Bachelor of Arts in History, 2006–2010