Nick Virden
AI Engineer, Frontend-Leaning Full Stack
Austin, Texas
nick@nickvirden.com
https://nickvirden.com

SUMMARY
9+ years building high-performance React, Next.js & TypeScript applications for fintech, legal, media, and healthcare — with Claude Code and Cursor as daily practice, not a buzzword.

EXPERIENCE
TwinWise AI — AI Engineer, Frontend-Focused — Contract — Jan 2026 – Jun 2026
  - Orchestrated single- and multi-agent development workflows on an AI-first product; built a bounded, multi-persona adversarial review pipeline — attacking plans pre-implementation and code post-implementation — to ship agentic output at production quality.
Thrivent — Senior Frontend Developer — Contract — Sep 2023 – Dec 2025
  - Led a full lift-and-shift of a legacy platform to a modern, highly performant, mobile-responsive React/Next.js/TypeScript application alongside a team of senior engineers, partnering directly with product and design to ship production features.
  - Drove product decisions for Thrivent's financial-advisor search experience (React/Next.js/TypeScript); maintained a Java/Spring Boot API service to sanitize and integrate advisor data from Yext, the team's central data warehouse for advisor information across social platforms.
WBD — Senior Frontend Developer — Contract — Feb 2022 – Dec 2023
  - Built a shared front-end component library adopted across HBO, DC.com, and other WBD properties.
  - Led a cross-functional initiative to add internationalization across all WBD partner-brand sites, defining data contracts with backend and shared components with design.
LegalShield — Senior Frontend Developer — Full-time — Jul 2021 – Jan 2022
  - Led the internal modernization of a lawyer case-tracking tool used by lawyers and their clients to track case handling and look up lawyer information.
  - Mentored junior developers alongside core front-end work.
Feedtrail — Frontend Architect — Full-time — Mar 2020 – Jun 2021
  - Owned front-end architecture decisions for a greenfield analytics platform adopted by major US and European hospital systems.
ZenBusiness — Frontend-Leaning Full Stack Developer — Contract — Jul 2018 – Aug 2019
  - Worked closely with marketing & UI design teams to boost landing-page conversions in an enterprise-level React + Redux app.
  - Integrated Intercom with a GCP-hosted Django API and Salesforce to track customer data for upsells.
  - Edited multi-level SQL queries in the production PostgreSQL database to track customer growth.
Trilogy Education Services — Instructor/TA — Contract — Jan 2018 – Jul 2018
  - Taught full-stack web development and introductory machine learning.
WipeRecord — CTO — Freelance — Apr 2017 – Oct 2020
  - Rebuilt a lead-generation product into a fully custom solution over three years — TDD, Salesforce integrations, full technical ownership.
Cingo.me — Full Stack Developer — Contract — Oct 2016 – Apr 2017
  - Built a two-way SMS integration with Twilio, letting customers hold real-time text conversations with customer service representatives.
  - Designed and maintained the company's HTML5/SCSS/jQuery marketing website.

SELECTED WORK
WipeRecord
+47% lead conversion, onboarding cut from 4 days to 1, for a legal-tech client.
React, Node.js, Salesforce
Feedtrail
Greenfield analytics platform adopted by major US & European hospital systems, built 0-to-1.
React, Redux, Nivo
Rebuilding nickvirden.com — an agentic engineering case study
This site itself: a plan-adversarial review-implement-verify loop run across eighteen PRs, three simultaneous visual themes, a real security hardening pass, and a discoverability layer built for both search engines and language models.
Next.js, next-yak, MCP, OpenAPI

AVAILABILITY
Open to fractional CTO, corp-to-corp consulting, W2 contract, and full-time engagements.