Nick Rios | Solution Architect

About

Bridging the gap between engineering and impact.

I'm a Solution Architect with 7+ years building things that matter to all types of audiences — from API integrations and cloud-native architectures for securing Australian classified documents to data pipelines and developer tooling for enterprise financial institutions in Texas.

Right now I'm building Spectre AI — an AI-powered API mock proxy that learns from real traffic so developers can stop writing test fixtures by hand.

Experience

Tonic.ai

Solutions Architect → Senior Solutions Architect

May 2022 – Present

Clearbit (now HubSpot)

Senior Technical Support Engineer

January 2021 – May 2022

Talkdesk

Integrations / Expert Services Engineer

July 2019 – January 2021

UCLA

B.S. Electrical & Computer Engineering

August 2015 – June 2019

Languages

Python JavaScript TypeScript SQL Java Rust C++ HTML & CSS

Cloud & Infra

AWS GCP Azure Docker Kubernetes CI/CD

Frameworks & Platforms

Next.js FastAPI React Axum Tailwind Salesforce

Data & Integrations

PostgreSQL REST APIs CRM CDP ETL ODBC Prometheus

Certifications

AWS Cloud Practitioner Google IT Support AWS Containerized Apps

Runbooks

Cloud Migration

End-to-end lift-and-shift and re-architecture playbooks for moving workloads to AWS. Includes pre-migration audits, VPC setup, and cutover runbooks.

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD pipeline design and container orchestration with Docker and Kubernetes. Repeatable environment provisioning from dev through production.

API Integration

Custom middleware and REST API integration patterns across CRM, CDP, and third-party platforms. Includes Salesforce Lightning and Talkdesk connector builds.

Data Pipeline Design

ETL and ODBC pipeline architecture for enterprise data flows. Data quality, transformation logic, and schema migration strategies across relational databases.

RAG Pipeline Architecture

Retrieval-augmented generation system design across vector stores, embedding strategies, chunking, and context management. Tuned for accuracy, latency, and cost at production scale.

Technical Enablement

Implementation methodologies and training programs for professional services teams. Reusable content that cut helpdesk response and resolution times by over 50%.

Prompt Engineering & Fine-tuning

Prompt template design, few-shot strategy, and PEFT/LoRA fine-tuning workflows for domain-specific LLMs. Dataset curation, iterative evaluation, and confidence calibration.

Proof-of-Concept Delivery

Embedded customer engagements from technical discovery through production rollout. Rapid POC builds, stakeholder alignment, and custom integration development against live systems.

Projects

In Development — 2026

Spectre AI

An AI-powered API mock proxy that records real traffic and replays it as deterministic mocks — with a fine-tuned model stepping in when coverage runs out.

View project

What people say

Nick is a gem! He's always ready to hop on a call and resolve problems in record time.

Sandra — DevOps, Client

He shows real commitment and demonstrates entrepreneurship skills as well as innovation abilities.

Previn — Engineering, Cisco

He doesn't give up until he finds a solution for what seems impossible.

Kevin — Manager, Talkdesk

Quick as lightning with robust solutions.

Adam — Solutions, Box