The interesting part is keeping it running.

I'm Nikos, a lead software engineer in Athens. For about six years I've built data-heavy backend systems and operated them in production: streaming ingestion, real-time processing, and the deployment automation and observability underneath. The domains have ranged from industrial sensors to transport video to defense data, but the shape of the work is the same. Move a lot of data, keep it fast, keep it running.

I came up on Python and still value it for the speed and clarity it gives a team. But I have run into its limits enough times that I now reach for typed, compiled languages when the system needs tighter guarantees. Go is useful when simplicity and operational fit matter most; Rust is where I go for hot paths and the kind of control that prevents whole classes of production bugs.

On infrastructure I lean on Ansible, Docker, Kubernetes, and Prometheus-style observability, with the same habits running in a Proxmox homelab. I tend to design systems as small services with a single, clear responsibility, which keeps each piece easy to reason about and cheap to replace.

What I care about most is the part after the merge: whether the system stays up, stays fast, and stays debuggable under real load. I treat reliability as something you design for, not something you bolt on later.

This site is deliberately plain: static, no client-side JavaScript, built with Astro and shipped as a small nginx container from my own Forgejo CI. The only motion is CSS.

I hold an M.Sc. in Data Science and Machine Learning and a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering, both from NTUA.

The fastest way to reach me is email:tzagkarakis.nik@gmail.com. I'm also on LinkedIn.