Nikos Pappas
Curriculum Vitae ·

Nikolaos Pappas.

Senior Software Engineer — 9+ years.

I am a passionate software consultant with more than two years of experience in FinTech, two years as an Audio Engineer, and an overall 9+ years of experience as a Software Engineer. I have worked across back-end, front-end, and native applications in Java, JavaScript, C++ and Swift.

My studies include an MSc in Computer Science at the University of Bristol and a BEng/MEng in Civil Engineering at the Democritus University of Thrace. From this diverse path I bring strong problem solving, the ability to adapt rapidly, and a result-driven approach to a broad range of tasks.

Download CV ↓ hello@nikpappas.com blog.nikpappas.com ↗
01 / Experience

Experience

A chronology of roles, products and the lessons that came with them.

  1. 2023 — 2026 · Full-Time

    Senior Full-stack Software Engineer

    DAACI · London

    Built tools for musicians and composers — a Java standalone app for meta-composition and a suite of C++ plug-ins. The most notable shipped product was Natural Drums.

    Maintained the visual design system across products and led UI initiatives, liaising with design agencies, the music team and the C-Suite to keep the experience cohesive and aligend with the vision.

    Started as a dedicated engineer on the meta-composition tool, the embodiment of the company's vision, and grew into wider responsibilities including delivering the flagship product, Natural Drums. Coordinated releases with comms, CX, and the music team (who also ran QA before each release).

    After Natural Drums, packaged a year-long musical research effort into a symbolic AI system, surfaced as an iOS app that let users create tunes without needing to understand the underlying music theory.

  2. 2022 — 2023 · Full-Time · 1 year

    Senior Full-stack Software Engineer

    HeliosX · London

    Developed and maintained technology that backed the e-shop and business processes, connecting patients with physicians and the warehouse, to streamline the flow from need to fullfillment. With heavy involvement in design, I spearheaded the move to a modulith that could be split into services on demand, making whitelabeling significantly more maintainable.

    Highlighted security issues across the system and championed their mitigation. I wrote a RFC for security policy and evangelised it until security made it into company-wide OKRs.

  3. 2020 — 2022 · Full-Time · 2 years 8 months

    Full-stack Software Engineer

    ScienceDirect (Elsevier) · London

    Built and maintained microservices powering sciencedirect.com (Java DW / JS / React), plus Apache Camel processors consuming messages from the publishing and NLP pipelines.

    Acted as security champion for ScienceDirect from 2021 — raising awareness, patching vulnerabilities, and running workshops to map the department's attack surface.

    Delivered a search algorithm with a 95th-percentile latency under 50ms, and redesigned the upstream NLP pipeline that processed our content to surface a list of "topics" rendered as an encyclopedia-like site. This redesign from scratch took two months to implement and verify and cut the processing time from 4 days to 6 hours and the cost from around $500 to $60.

  4. 2017 — 2019 · Full-Time · 2 years 11 months

    Software Consultant

    Scott Logic · Bristol

    Built bespoke software for a leading investment bank, including FSCS reporting and a PySpark data analytics platform.

    Refined requirements per project needs and investigated technologies suitable for the client's use case.

  5. 2016 · Project · 2 months

    Motion Tracking Annotation

    SPHERE · Bristol

    Annotated raw data from motion-detection cameras using VICON's Nexus Motion Capture Software.

  6. 2015 · Project · 2 months

    Electrician Assistant

    Bristol Sparks · Bristol

    Installed electrical circuits and CCTV systems.

  7. 2013 · Internship · 4 months

    Research Assistant

    GTE · Madrid

    Calculated simple structures for construction and researched folding trusses as a future investment.

02 / Projects

Projects

Things I have shipped, shaped, or learned from.

Natural Drums main screen
DAACI

Natural Drums ↗

  • C++
  • JUCE
  • AudioUnit
  • VST3
  • AAX

A music-production plug-in that fits into any modern DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). It distils the experience of seasoned musicians into rhythms that help anyone create intricate patterns and overcome creative block.

Ships as AudioUnit, VST3 and AAX. Built on the JUCE framework in C++.

My contribution centred on UI elements and interactions, and on driving user experience, flows and aesthetics.

The hardest part was the support matrix — all major DAWs on macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Windows, in a small team with no dedicated QA. I built testing scenarios and coordinated the team's coverage so every release was vetted end-to-end.

Elsevier

Spark NLP Pipeline

  • Spark
  • NLP
  • Scala

A pipeline that consumed all of Elsevier's academic publishing content and clustered concepts into "topics" — rendered as an encyclopedia-like site that used snippets to drive users into the full content.

Scott Logic

PySpark Data Analytics Platform

  • Python
  • PySpark
  • Hadoop
  • YARN

A Python application that gathers data from the client's businesses, analyses it, and exports it in multiple formats for end-user flexibility. Uses Spark and Hadoop with jobs submitted via YARN.

I wrote Spark queries to transform and aggregate position and transaction data, and developed a unit-testing framework offering an API for ergonomic DataFrame creation and equality assertions. Freemarker Template generated configuration files so other departments could adapt the software without further development.

Configuring and fine-tuning Spark beyond the simple cases was a rewarding deep-dive, as was keeping Spark unit tests prudent — sensible tests only, to keep build times in check.

Sectional view of Glasgow Tenements
Common Wealth

Green New Deal — Glasgow ↗

  • JavaScript
  • Interactive SVG

A series of interactive websites presenting a potential implementation of the Green New Deal in Glasgow. Research by Ground Lab, presented in Common Wealth's Green New Deal series.

UK Re-wilding landing page
Common Wealth

UK Restoration and Rewilding ↗

  • JavaScript
  • Interactive SVG

An interactive SVG map of the benefits of re-wilding the UK, based on quantitative research by Simon Lewis as part of Common Wealth's Green New Deal series.

Scott Logic

FSCS Reporting Tool

  • Java
  • Java Stream

A Java application that gathers data from the client's businesses and produces a report compliant with FSCS regulations. I championed Java Streams to express the many complicated transformations in the data flow.

Details cannot be provided due to a non-disclosure agreement with the client.

Scott Logic

Candidate Application Tracker

  • Java
  • ReactJS
  • Durandal
  • SQL
  • Exchange

A web app tracking candidates through every position. Maintained and extended the Java back-end and the Durandal front-end, then re-wrote the front-end in ReactJS while making it GDPR compliant.

Integrated with Exchange for room booking and invites, backed by an SQL database for interview scores and comments. Used granular per-role privileges to help HR pick the most adequate interviewers based on seniority and relevant tech. Integrated with the company website via wpengine and Gravity Forms.

University of Bristol

University Forum Database

  • SQL
  • Java
  • TDD

Group project (4 people) for the Databases unit. Each member implemented a separate method — an SQL query and the equivalent Java server method. Productivity platforms and test-driven development were key. Received best-of-class mark (100%).

Diagnosed X-ray mammography
University of Bristol Dissertation

Mammography Interpretation Tool

  • Computer Vision
  • CNN
  • Caffe
  • Python
  • C++

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) are machine learning structures that can implement aspects of biological vision systems. They can be applied in Computer Vision to recognise and classify objects in imagery.

This project produced a mammary gland screening tool using CNNs — at minimum, able to segment volumes whose densities differ from the expected and highlight suspected malignant tumour regions, ideally assisting doctors in assessing mammography samples.

The CNN framework used was Caffe, developed by the Berkeley Vision and Learning Center.

Experiment assembly
DUTh Dissertation

Reduced Beam Section Moment Connections

  • Abaqus
  • FEM
  • Eurocode

Protecting connections and columns in steel frames from brittle failure by the controlled weakening of the beam. Included a full-scale Eurocode-compliant experiment and its corroboration via a Finite Element Analysis model in Abaqus/CAE.

03 / Skills

Skills

Languages, frameworks and the years behind them.

  • Java

    Started with auxiliary calculation apps during civil engineering (column stress, rebar calculation), then deepened at Bristol. Used heavily across ScienceDirect and Scott Logic — Dropwizard services, Apache Camel processors, FSCS reporting. Oracle Certified Associate — Java 8.

  • JavaScript

    Part of most of my full-stack roles — ScienceDirect, HeliosX and Scott Logic. Worked across React, legacy Durandal, and bespoke interactive SVG sites (Common Wealth GND, Re-wilding UK, Tomorrows, elvarce.com).

  • React

    My main front-end framework across ScienceDirect, HeliosX and Scott Logic — from greenfield apps to migrating legacy Durandal codebases. Comfortable with hooks, suspense, RSC patterns and shared design-system work.

  • TypeScript

    In HeliosX and DAACI there was 100% adoption of Typsescript with strict rules about circumenting the types.

  • JUCE

    Used extensively at DAACI to build music-production plug-ins for AudioUnit, VST3 and AAX across macOS (Intel & Apple Silicon) and Windows. Focus on UI components, interactions and aesthetics, and on cross-DAW QA coordination.

  • C++

    Picked up at DAACI for audio plug-ins on top of the JUCE framework — real-time audio code, plug-in UI and cross-platform builds.

  • Spark

    Worked extensively at Scott Logic and Elsevier — PySpark and Spark SQL jobs over Hadoop/YARN. Built a unit-testing framework wrapping Spark sessions, ergonomic DataFrame creation and equality assertions. Redesigned an NLP pipeline at Elsevier.

  • Python

    Used Python — and specifically Jupyter notebooks — to visualise the layers of the CNN used in the Mammography Interpretation Tool. Modules: NumPy, matplotlib, caffe.

  • SQL

    Implemented the database side of a faculty forum during the Bristol Databases unit (Java + SQLite). Continued use across ScienceDirect, HeliosX, Scott Logic.

  • HTML5 & CSS

    First touched in a High-School class, formalised in the Bristol Web Technologies unit, then daily through React work and bespoke interactive sites.

  • Node.js

    Powered server-side dynamic websites and their backing databases, and the build/tooling layer behind React projects at ScienceDirect, HeliosX and Scott Logic.

  • Scala

    Favourite functional-first programming language. I did a series of personal projects with scala and spark to query open datasets to find interesting data points.

  • C

    Main language of the Bristol Master's course. Data structures (linked lists, queues, trees, stacks). Teletext decoder, Game of Life, image processing and computer vision apps with OpenCV. Libraries: SDL, OpenCV, atlas, lmdb, pthread.

  • MATLAB

    First contact with programming — initially with built-in libraries for engineering problems (plotting, fuzzy logic). Used heavily for the final-project automation of preprocessing a 10,480-image mammography dataset.

Also fluent in

Software & tools

Development

  • Git Git
  • Docker Docker
  • Gradle Gradle
  • Maven Maven
  • Processing Processing
  • Figma Figma

Backend & Data

  • Spring Spring
  • Express Express
  • Apache Camel Apache Camel
  • PostgreSQL PostgreSQL
  • Neo4j Neo4j
  • Redis Redis
  • AWS AWS
  • Grafana Grafana

Misc

  • Blender Blender
  • Maya Maya
  • Simulia Abaqus Simulia Abaqus
  • Robot Robot
  • Inventor Inventor
04 / Education

Education

From civil engineering to computer science.

  1. 2015 — 2016
    University of Bristol logo University of Bristol

    Computer Science MSc

    Average
    74%
    Project
    Mammography Interpretation Tool using Convolutional Neural Networks
    Units + show
    • Programming in C 73%
    • Computer Architecture 75%
    • Software Engineering 68%
    • Web Technologies 78%
    • Databases 82%
    • Research Skills 66%
    • Object Oriented Programming — Java 75%
  2. 2011 — 2012
    Universidad de Granada logo Universidad de Granada

    Civil Engineering

    Erasmus Exchange Program

  3. 2007 — 2014
    Democritus University of Thrace logo Democritus University of Thrace

    Civil Engineering BEng / Structural Engineering MEng

    Average
    7.07 / 10
    Project
    Experimental Corroboration of the Behaviour of a Bolted RBS Connection under Cyclic Load
    Units + show
    • Fuzzy Logic 10/10
    • Informatics — Fortran 9/10
    • Mechanics of Rigid Body 9/10
    • Theory of Elastic Stability 10/10
    • Plates and Shells 9.5/10
    • Theory of Elasticity 7.5/10
    • Steel Structures 8.5/10
    • Laboratory Topics in Reinforced Concrete 8.5/10
    • Fluid Mechanics 7/10
    • Numerical Analysis 7/10
  4. 2001 — 2007
    Anatolia College of Thessaloniki logo Anatolia College of Thessaloniki

    High School

    Average
    18.67 / 20
    Extras
    • Greek Theatre Club
    • Chess Club
    • Tennis Club
    • School Newspaper Club
05 / Languages

Languages

Spoken, lived-in, certified.

  • English

    Fluent

    IELTS 8.0 (2015) · Michigan Proficiency C1 (2006) · Cambridge Advanced B2 (2006)

  • Greek

    Native

    Mother language

  • Spanish

    Fluent

    B2 Common European Framework of Reference (2010). Lived, studied and worked in Spain.

  • German

    Basic

    B1 Zertifikat (2004)

Outside the screen

Hobbies

  • Digital Music Production Digital Music Production
  • Photography Photography
  • Capoeira Capoeira
  • Chess Chess
  • Skiing Skiing
  • Climbing Climbing
06 / Contact

Contact

Open to interesting problems and warm-hearted teams.

The best way to reach me is by email — I usually reply within a day.