Josh Nykamp

2024 — Present

Remote

Senior Director of Engineering

DraftKings

• →Led integration of Jackpocket into the DraftKings ecosystem post-acquisition
• →Expanded lottery product line — launched keno and scaled scratchers across the platform
• →Founded a new hardware team building machines for lottery and scratcher automation

2021 — 2024

Remote

VP of Engineering

Jackpocket (acquired by DraftKings)

• →Inherited a single large team with no clear ownership boundaries; split engineering into dedicated ecommerce and fulfillment orgs with separate backlogs and independent release cycles
• →Redesigned core architecture around a message bus with a testable interface, decoupling ecommerce and fulfillment so each could ship independently
• →Ran an Accelerate book club and drove full DevOps adoption — within 6 months the team went from 1–2 releases per month to deploying many times per day behind feature flags, eliminating rollbacks
• →Launched scratchers in 2022, adding a new line of business to the platform
• →Grew the engineering org from 11 to 50 engineers, 3 SREs, 2 security engineers, and 5 managers over 3 years with no regrettable attrition
• →Built a test suite and CI/CD pipeline robust enough to eliminate QA entirely by 2024

Sep 2019 — Jun 2021

Irvine, CA (Remote)

Director of Engineering

Weedmaps

• →Partnered with GM to write the business plan, gather requirements, and define product specs for Weedmaps Exchange — the company's B2B wholesale marketplace
• →Hired 13 engineers to build Weedmaps Exchange; launched May 2019 — within 6 months it was generating $3M in monthly GMV
• →Hired and developed Engineering Managers; managed offshore teams in Costa Rica and Colombia
• →Authored the Weedmaps Engineering Career Ladder and review process; designed new SDLC to improve team performance tracking

Aug 2017 — Sep 2019

Irvine, CA

Engineering Manager

Weedmaps

• →Built and launched Weedmaps Logistics — Android/iOS driver apps and a web dispatch interface for managing pickup orders and assigning drivers
• →Managed 2 cross-functional teams of 8 engineers with zero attrition; maintained 98% test coverage and 99.9% uptime across all production systems
• →Piloted Elixir adoption to replace Ruby; created an Elixir training program to upskill existing engineers and onboard new hires
• →Created a junior engineer training program; hired 50+ engineers across the organization

Oct 2016 — Aug 2017

Irvine, CA

Senior Software Engineer

Weedmaps

• →Built a GraphQL API using Elixir/Phoenix; developed frontend applications in React, GraphQL, and Apollo
• →Established Docker-based development environments across engineering teams

2016

Remote

Senior Software Engineer — Contractor

NBC (via Gorilla Logic)

• →Converted NBC.com from Drupal 7 to a headless architecture with a Node.js/React frontend
• →Built live streaming infrastructure for Olympic coverage on Drupal 7

2014 — 2015

Software Engineer

TalentReef

• →Built a SaaS platform for social recruiting of hourly employees using Drupal
• →Developed custom Drupal modules; managed CentOS servers
• →Managed migration from outsourced to in-house development
• →Decoupled the Drupal view layer using Angular

2013

Software Engineer

I-Behavior

• →Built internal web applications at a big data company using Laravel and Angular

2011 — 2013

Software Engineer

New Frontier Media / Hustler

• →Built a single sign-on 360° web experience for cable subscribers
• →Co-developed one of the first adult smart TV applications — built a custom JavaScript UI framework backed by a PHP API at the dawn of the smart TV era

Leadership

Engineering

Architecture

2005 — 2006

Miami Ad School

Advertising & Photography

2004 — 2005

Santa Barbara City College

General Studies