Subtle Path

Nick Walker

Product × Engineering

I build where people meet complex, consequential systems, where confusing interfaces or missed signals carry real costs.

For 25 years I’ve made complicated, regulated, safety- and privacy-critical systems legible and trustworthy to the people who rely on them. That work has included security forensics, augmented reality for helicopter pilots, federally audited research-compliance software, mission control for uncrewed ocean vessels, and an award-winning AI news app. I now run Subtle Path, an independent R&D studio in Ashland, Oregon.

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Nick Walker
Ashland, Oregon

Work

  1. – now

    Subtle Path LLC

    Founder

    An independent R&D studio building multi-user AI agent harnesses: systems where teams of people and AI agents work in shared context. I’m also working on AI-powered translation for low-resource languages and on interactive e-books.

    Sources

  2. –

    Particle

    Product Engineer

    I built the History timeline, Featured Articles, Personalized Feeds, home-screen widgets and several other major features of this AI news app. Particle was App Store App of the Day and an Editors’ Choice, and reached #1 in the App Store’s Magazines & Newspapers category.

    Sources

  3. –

    Saildrone

    Senior Engineering Manager

    I led the front-end team building operator interfaces for Saildrone’s fleet of uncrewed ocean vehicles: mission control, remote piloting, and weather and mission reporting. We focused on clarity under operational pressure, reliable delivery and modernizing the UI platform.

    Sources

  4. –

    Sofar Ocean

    Staff Software Engineer

    I built route-guidance features for a “Google Maps for the ocean,” including a daily weather and routing report that turns enhanced marine forecasts into guidance for cargo-ship operators.

    Sources

  5. –

    Bad Rabbit

    Director of Product Engineering

    I led new-product development at a research-administration firm serving major academic medical centers. We designed and built custom IRB and training-compliance products, sold to multiple hospitals as alternatives to Huron Click, and delivered Click-based solutions for Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Children’s Mercy, NYU Medical Center and others.

    I managed three to five engineers across new products and forward-engineering support, for systems operating under federal regulation and audit.

    Sources

Earlier

Security, standards and human–machine interfaces from earlier in my career.

  1. – Standards

    OAuth 2.0, RFC 6749

    I contributed to the IETF’s OAuth 2.0 standard, which now underpins authorization across much of the web, and I’m named in its acknowledgements. My contribution identified and closed an open-redirect vulnerability.

    Sources

  2. Cinema

    Next-generation cinema, with Douglas Trumbull

    Work on next-generation cinema with Douglas Trumbull, the visual-effects pioneer behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters and Blade Runner. His later research produced MAGI, an early process for shooting and projecting film in 4K 3D at 120 frames per second.

    Sources

  3. Augmented reality

    Bell Helicopter

    An augmented-reality situational-awareness display for Bell Helicopter pilots, built with Tom Furness, founder of the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Lab, and Brian Schowengerdt, later co-founder and chief science officer of Magic Leap. I’m also a co-inventor with both of them on two US patents.

    Sources

  4. Security

    FBI Major Case 216

    I started 25 years ago in security. In 2004, as a system administrator at Simon’s Rock College, I reverse-engineered the rootkit behind FBI Major Case 216, a campaign that hit more than a thousand sites, including military sites, national labs and research universities.

    I broke the rootkit’s encryption and built Unsuckit, a tool that traced the attacker’s path back through the machines they used, before handing the case over.

    Sources

Service

Great Vehicle Foundation

Director since 2019. An Oregon nonprofit preserving and sharing the Dzogchen lineage.

Education

Bard College at Simon’s Rock

Contact

The quickest way to reach me is a 15-minute call. You can also message me on LinkedIn.

Book a 15-minute call LinkedIn GitHub