I am Nithish, an Engineer with a background in diverse areas including Software Engineering, Dev Ops, Developer Relations, Data Engineering, Lean Startups, Design Thinking, Machine Learning & Building Communities. I love to build products that solve real problems in short spans of time. In my free time, I like to read, hack stuff, attend local tech events, travel & follow Olympic sports.

Originally from Kochi in India, I came to Munich, Germany for my Masters in Computer Science from the Technical University of Munich.

I have experienced different areas of the industry having worked in diverse startups & consulting in Munich, Germany for the past 5 years and Tata Elxsi, an Engineering services company in India for 2.5 years.

Currently, I am working as an Associate at the Innovation Lab at Zooplus, Europe’s leading retailer for pet supplies on the Internet. At Zooplus, I am part of the team that is building prototypes & measuring their impact on the business. Before that, I was working as a Data Scientist / Engineer at KI labs building data products for different clients across diverse industries like Automotive, Logistics, Hospitality, Chemicals, etc. Additionally, as a Developer Advocate, I was responsible for the different initiatives for the local community & internal activities at KI labs. In the past, I have worked in startups in Software Engineering & Dev Ops roles in the areas of Medical Tourism, Collaborative Document Platform & Embedded Systems in Munich. I have also worked in India as a Senior Software Engineer on audio processing, test frameworks, various plugins & utilities for both in-house & external clients.

Apart from work, I like to interact and engage with the tech community through Meetups, Hackathons & other social events. I am one of the organizers of the PyData Munich Meetup with over 2400 members where we hold tutorials related to Python or Data Science all over Munich. I also regularly give talks at these events. You can find some of the past talks on Slideshare. I usually attend one event every week on topics related to Data Science, Python, Startups & Engineering in general.

In my free time, I like to try stuff out by hacking together something that I find interesting or is useful to me. I am also a frequent attendee at hackathons all over Europe. I have also won a fair share of them. You can find more details about them on DevPost.

I love to read. My current preferences are mostly non-fiction & autobiographies. Some of my favourite books include Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, Zero to One by Peter Thiel, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, A Shot At History: My Obsessive Journey to Olympic Gold by Abhinav Bindra & Rohit Brijnath, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think by the Rosling Family. Among fiction, I am a die-hard Harry Potter fan & also read a lot of Enid Blyton in my school days. I also enjoyed the initial works of Dan Brown & the Robert Galbraith series which I find too monotonous now.

Travelling is another of my hobbies. I like to explore different places. I love the walking tours of cities as they give you an overview of the city for you to further explore the city. Some of my favourite places to travel include Geneva, London, Venice, Hamburg, Budapest, Mumbai.

I like to follow the Olympic sports & would love to watch it in person one day. I follow the progress of most of the Indian athletes competing in different Olympic sports. My favourite sports to follow include Shooting, Badminton, Field Hockey, Athletics, Archery, Wrestling, Archery & Boxing. Apart from the Olympic sports, I also follow Formula 1 & Tennis at the international level. I have covered tennis tournaments for Indian Tennis Daily. I love to play Table Tennis & Badminton apart from Scrabble. I have in the past won the State championships in Scrabble in my home state of Kerala in India.

If you like to reach out to me regarding anything you find here, you can email me at hi@[domain].com or reach out on @nithishr