Nicholas LaJoie

Email: nic@lajoie.me

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nicholaslajoie

Bio: Born and raised on a potato farm in Northern Maine (hence, @SpudNiche), my upbringing fostered a love for tinkering and problem solving. Today, I'm an engineer that is passionate about life-long learning and building impactful software!

Skills

• Proficiency in: Python, Django, Docker, Postgres, AWS/Aptible services, Terraform, Git/CLI tooling
• Actively exploring: Data engineering (dlt, dbt, marimo, duckdb), self-hosting, LLM/AI tooling
• Misc: Comfortable with ambiguity and learning new (to me) tools/approaches to solving problems; quick to identify solutions that aim to balance timeliness, quality, and maintainbility

Details

To expand a bit: my work today centers around contributing to a team that deploys production-grade, HIPAA-compliant backend systems. As a small team, we also handle support, monitoring, and quality control by using tools like Sumo Logic, Sentry, and Jira/Zephyr. We prioritize user experience and safety above all else, so we use these tools (and our in-house mobile app update system) to roll out product improvements and security patches in ways that minimize user churn/impact as much as possible. Our small but mighty team is incredibly thoughtful; our high standards and care have led to a culture of excellence and quality that I am proud to be a part of!

Stuff I Enjoy

• Collecting old Maine books (from historical records to anything by Ruth Moore)
• Mowing the lawn with my '87 Cub Cadet (thanks Dad!)
• Building things out of wood (sometimes flowerstands, mostly shelves or other flat surfaces)
• Accumulating temp/humidity data about my house in HomeAssistant (and then telling myself I'll analyze it)
• Playing (drums, piano), listening to, and discussing music of all kinds

Experience

Education

B.S. in Computer Engineering - University of Maine, 2018