Nicholas Schmidt

Nicholas Schmidt

CTO | Entrepreneur | Veteran | Father | Geek Building scalable tech, renewable energy solutions, and data-driven insights.

Contact: nick@geekyschmidt.com | LinkedIn | Blog
Location: Greater Saginaw-Midland-Bay City Area, Michigan

Summary

Global entrepreneur and technology leader with a track record of scaling businesses across renewable energy, defence, aviation, manufacturing, and enterprise software. Experienced in both bootstrapped growth and VC-backed scaling, I specialise in transforming ideas into resilient, data-driven systems that deliver measurable impact.

  • Leadership: Built and scaled global teams, fostering cultures of innovation, trust, and execution.
  • Technology: Architected enterprise platforms and AI-driven solutions that improve efficiency, security, and scalability.
  • Industries: Renewable energy (smart grids, storage, sustainability), defence and aviation (mission-critical systems), manufacturing (automation and analytics), and enterprise SaaS.
  • Entrepreneurship: Proven ability to grow companies from zero to scale while balancing strategic vision with hands-on technical execution.

I am a veteran, father, and lifelong technologist who thrives at the keyboard as much as in the boardroom. Passionate about renewable energy, open-source innovation, and building tools that unlock actionable insights from data.

Experience

bp

Chief Technology Officer (REPS) | October 2021 – Present (4 years 9 months)
Houston, TX (Remote) Driving digital transformation of bp’s Retail Energy Platform across trading, customer platforms, demand-side management, and portfolio management.

  • Mission-focused leader executing architecture, engineering, and product delivery to turn complex data into decisive commercial action—not dashboards for the sake of dashboards.
  • Force multiplier directing high-performing distributed teams across North America, South America, and Europe, maintaining engineering standards and operational tempo across time zones.
  • Technical strategist who operates from the front; setting architecture, reviewing code, and writing code when required to ship production-ready, high-value systems.
  • Secure-by-design advocate embedding data controls, identity management, and compliance directly into the architecture from inception.

Core Focus:

  • Data into Action: Converting complex energy metrics into actionable commercial insight.
  • Insight to Execution: Building robust platforms that seamlessly bridge analytics and operational execution.
  • Industrialised Delivery: Scaling secure, resilient, and highly available architectures.
  • Proactive Security: Treating security, resilience, and compliance as structural foundations, never as an afterthought.
  • Strategic Alignment: Ensuring every engineering deployment maps directly to a clear business outcome.

AI & Platform Evolution:

  • Weaponising AI Tooling: Integrating advanced AI tooling and automated processes across internal Developer, SRE, and Architecture workflows to radically accelerate delivery tempo and system reliability.
  • Citizen Development: Partnering directly with business units to onboard technical power users, establishing the governance and guardrails needed to transition local workflows into fully production-ready applications.

Blueprint Power SK

Managing Director (bp Subsidiary) | November 2022 – Present (3 years 8 months)
Bratislava, Slovakia Established and managed an international subsidiary, overseeing legal setup, regulatory compliance, and market entry. Led local operations, aligning business strategy with corporate goals, while managing financial performance and local staff. Acted as the primary liaison with stakeholders, ensuring successful integration into the local market.

Blueprint Power

Chief Technology Officer | December 2017 – October 2021 (3 years 11 months)
New York, NY Acquired by bp!

  • Developed an IoT hardware platform, including data science models, dashboards, and backend software, to enable behind-the-meter energy solutions and building optimisation.
  • Supervised the installations of hardware and software solutions at sites linking to the cloud architecture and energy market connectors.
  • Recruited, developed, and managed a distributed global engineering team. Gained recognition as an industry expert in grid security (NIST 800) and modern data telemetry by the State of New York and industry groups.
  • Assisted in securing 3 rounds of funding before ensuring a successful exit to one of the largest energy companies, bp.
  • Guided and developed the newly established company by implementing lead engineering solutions and technology vision through process development, engineering rigour, and growth.
  • Helped establish a Minimum Viable Product vision utilised for raising a Series-A with the largest Real Estate and Technology Venture Capitalists.
  • Led and developed the software and architecture utilising a Kubernetes-based microservices architecture.
  • Established an international engineering team of over 45+ people. Opened a foreign company and office in Slovakia to support team growth.

STSI Middle East

Chief Technology Officer | August 2016 – April 2018 (1 year 9 months)
Abu Dhabi, UAE

  • Led the newly formed company through the architecture and solutions design, including signals intelligence, cyber security, airborne aircraft, and ground-based vehicle configurations.
  • Provided custom ISR solutions to 10+ GCC customers in Kuwait, Oman, UAE, and France.
  • Served as Chief Engineer for a PAC P-750 XSTOL based Airborne ISR platform.

Director of Security and Integration | September 2015 – September 2016 (1 year 1 month)
Madison, WI Area

  • Performed customer-facing installations and integrations while instantiating a Software Engineering infrastructure based on Agile Methodology.
  • Monitored the company’s first Department of Defense and Intelligence Community integrations, ensuring compliance with government requirements.
  • Migrated the platform from public cloud to FedRAMP Compliant AWS.
  • Served as one of three Directors reporting directly to the CEO across engineering, security, ITAR Export, and business development.

XALT Energy

Director of Information Technology & Security (Dow Kokam) | August 2014 – February 2016 (1 year 7 months)
Midland, MI

  • Migrated and expanded the IT team from a small 3-technician organisation to a 24x7, 20-person enterprise staff.
  • Improved manufacturing process IT uptime by 50+%% through implementing an ITIL/ISO compliant lifecycle process.
  • Managed 15 vendors, talent acquisition, and key steering engagements reporting directly to the CEO.

Spec Ops Technology

Founder and Managing Partner (CTO) | 2010 – 2014 (4 years)
Washington, DC / Amsterdam, NL / Dubai, UAE Exited in 2014 to investors.

  • Managed 5 distributed teams with 50+ members delivering on $75M+ infrastructure integration projects (aviation, surveillance towers, and software development).
  • Boosted business from startup to $10M+ annual revenue within 2 years.
  • Served as Chief Engineer and Mission Commander on King Air & Bombardier Global Express Airborne ISR platforms.

KBR, Inc.

Chief Engineer | 2010 – 2012 (2 years)
Washington, D.C. Metro Area

  • Delivered high-level consulting expertise protecting the security of cross-domain information transfers from classified to unclassified networks.
  • Maximised network isolation parameters throughout design and deployment phases for federal clients, including the Department of Homeland Security.
  • Architected, built, deployed, and delivered technical training for mission-critical cross-domain solutions (CDS) to enforce secure data transfer across segregated tactical networks.

Boeing

Chief Engineer | 2005 – 2010 (5 years)
Washington, D.C.

  • Earned promotion as one of the company’s youngest-ever Chief Engineers based on technical performance and leadership background in the U.S. Air Force.
  • Headed the Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) group responsible for rapid R&D and cross-domain intelligence software.
  • Led a team of 150+ engineers across 4 national sites and established the Integrated Products Engineering Team (IPET).

United States Air Force

Information Security Engineer | March 2002 – March 2008 (6 years 1 month)
Tampa, FL

Surf1 & Silyn-Tek GmbH

Linux System Administrator | January 1997 – January 2000 (3 years 1 month)
Bitburg, Germany

  • Handled dial-in, infrastructure networking, and system monitoring utilizing Linux and BSD environments.
  • Developed user documentation for BeOS, MacOS, OS/2, and Linux systems.
  • Supported German and English speaking customers.

Core Skills & Certifications

Top Skills

  • Linux System Administration
  • Computer Hardware
  • Cybersecurity
  • Languages: English (Native), German (B2)
  • Security Clearance

Certifications & Technical Training

  • Google Cybersecurity (Credential ID: LFGMJF8PW6FC)
  • Automate Cybersecurity Tasks with Python (Credential ID: PBMJPKUH5Q22)
  • Assets, Threats, and Vulnerabilities (Credential ID: MCU4XOQO2OG9)
  • Tools of the Trade: Linux and SQL (Credential ID: Z4J7GIMC6XF9)
  • IT Security: Defence against the digital dark arts
  • Ethical Hacking with Kali Linux
  • CompTIA A+
  • Google IT Support
  • United States Air Force – Journeyman Technical Certification Level 5
  • Harvard University – Computer Science 50 (CS50)
  • U.S. Air Force Technical School – Boundary Information Protection (BIP) Network Security and Warfare, Cyber/Electronic Operations and Warfare
  • United States Air Force – 3COx1 Computer/Network Technical Certification