Senior Software Engineer
Nicholas Herbert
Senior Software Engineer at Amazon, architecting shopping experiences across Amazon.com web and mobile for hundreds of millions of customers. I lead cross-team initiatives, driving complex projects from ambiguity to delivery. Currently spearheading AI adoption across engineering teams and shipping generative AI systems to production.
Expertise
Mobile & Frontend
- → React Native at scale (Amazon Shopping app)
- → TypeScript, JavaScript, modern React patterns
- → Performance optimization & latency reduction
- → Cross-platform development (iOS, Android, Web)
Backend & Systems
- → Micro-services handling billions of requests
- → Java services & AWS infrastructure
- → API design & cloud architecture
- → Distributed systems & real-time delivery
AI & Emerging Tech
- → GenAI/LLM application development
- → Personalization & recommendation systems
- → Automated testing & instrumentation
- → Championing AI adoption across teams
Leadership
- → Technical ownership of flagship initiatives
- → Mentoring engineers to promotion
- → Cross-team coordination (10+ teams)
- → Driving projects from ambiguity to delivery
Career
Senior Software Development Engineer · 2022-Present | SDE · 2019-2022
Amazon
Building shopping experiences for hundreds of millions of customers across Amazon.com web and mobile. Leading cross-team initiatives and driving complex projects from ambiguity to delivery.
- Drove Inspire daily active users from 6MM to 9MM (50% growth)
- Reduced user abandonment from 60% to 20% via strategic latency pivot
- Architected feed API serving millions with zero incremental work for launches
- Built recommender platform reducing dev time by 75%
- Leading AI assistant prototype targeting 90% workload reduction
- Mentored engineers to promotion, hosted weekly office hours
Software Engineer · 2017-2019
Mandoe Media
Enterprise digital signage platform powering retail displays across Australia.
- 20,000+ screens across Australia
- Major retail and franchise clients
Honours · 2016 | Bachelor of Computer Science · 2013-2015
University of Wollongong
First Class Honours in Computer Science. Double major in Mobile Computing and Multimedia & Game Development.
- First Class Honours distinction
- Faculty Trade Show Best Project award
Projects
2025 · GenAI/LLM
AI Workflow Assistant
AI-powered assistant automating partner onboarding workflows. Built with LLM technology and Slack integration.
- Targeting 90% reduction in PM workload (64 hrs/week → minimal)
- LLM-as-a-judge framework for response quality
- Championing AI adoption across engineering teams
2023 · Performance
Inspire Feed Performance
Strategic pivot from 6-month streaming API to 3-month pre-fetching solution to solve critical user abandonment.
- Reduced user abandonment from 60% to 20%
- Up to 1 second latency reduction on Android
- 26.6M impressions at 88.5% success rate
2024 · Platform Engineering
Recommender Platform
Configurable recommendation system enabling rapid strategy development and A/B testing.
- Reduced dev time from 6 weeks to 2 weeks (75% faster)
- 5 new strategies onboarded in one year
- Prototyping achievable in 1-7 days
2025 · Technical Leadership
Legacy Service Migration
4-phase migration strategy to decommission Tier 1 legacy service while maintaining backwards compatibility.
- Eliminating 40+ engineer-weeks of annual maintenance
- Backwards-compatible API migration
- Guiding multiple engineers through execution
Let's Build Something
Open to interesting opportunities and collaborations. Whether you're building the next big thing or solving complex technical challenges, I'd love to hear from you.