Nicholas Weiss

About Nicholas Weiss

As a seasoned Product Management Leader, I specialize in guiding teams and organizations to develop software products that prioritize outcomes over outputs. Leveraging Lean-Agile methodologies, I empower product managers and teams to enhance their skills, fostering rapid iteration and delivering exceptional value to both users and businesses.​Throughout my career, I\'ve:​Delivered Valuable Products: Led teams to identify opportunities and deliver solutions that create value for businesses and users.Led Agile Transformations: Helped organizations shift toward agile and lean practices, improving team effectiveness, accelerating delivery, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.Mentored Emerging Leaders: Developed mentorship programs that have cultivated the next generation of product leaders, many of whom have advanced to senior roles within their organizations.​Championed User-Centric Design: Advocated for and implemented design thinking principles, leading to products that not only meet business goals but also delight users.​I am passionate about the intersection of technology and human-centered design, and I continuously seek opportunities to drive innovation that makes a meaningful impact.

Experience

1. Platform Staff Product Manager

   Rise8

   Apr 2025 — Present

   Lead the product strategy and execution for the delivery of mission-critical, high-compliance Kubernetes (OpenShift) platforms within DoD Impact Level 5 (IL5) and IL6 environments. Defined the roadmap that transforms bare infrastructure into a secure, turnkey DevSecOps ecosystem for tenant engineering teams.Key Achievements:* Delivered Secure Cloud Foundations (IL5/IL6): Directed the end-to-end build-out of production and development OpenShift clusters on AWS. Orchestrated the integration of core infrastructure services including Red Hat IdM for identity, bootstrapping EC2 nodes, and automated cluster configuration.* Architected a GitOps-Driven Toolchain: Transitioned platform delivery to a GitOps model using ArgoCD to manage the lifecycle of critical stack components (Cert-Manager, External-DNS, External-Secrets). Standardized the deployment of the DevSecOps suite, including Gitlab (with SSO) and Artifactory (High Availability).* Enforced Policy-as-Code & Zero Trust Security: Prioritized and delivered a robust security posture compliant with DoD standards. Implemented Kyverno for policy enforcement, Istio Service Mesh for traffic management, and ZScaler/Palo Alto integrations for secure boundary protection. Oversaw the rollout of automated SCAP scans and Tenable integration.* Streamlined Identity & Access Management (IAM): Solved complex authentication challenges by driving the implementation of Keycloak for SSO across the platform ecosystem. Mapped Realm Roles to ID groups to ensure seamless RBAC for tenant teams.* Enabled Multi-Tenant Scale: Reduced \"time-to-hello-world\" for new tenants by productizing the setup of namespaces, networking connectivity, and storage backups (Velero).* Platform Resilience & Observability: Defined requirements for and delivered high-availability solutions, including multi-AZ setups, etcd encryption/backups, and a comprehensive k8s-monitoring stack to ensure platform stability under load.

Education

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  Professional Certification, Architecture and Systems Engineering

  2016 — 2017

• Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina

  Master of Business Administration - MBA, International Business

  2018 — 2020

• Saint Louis University

  Certified ScrumMaster

  2017 — 2017

• Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina

  Certificate, Business Analytics

  2020 — 2020

• Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

  BS, Aerospace Engineering, Concentration in Astronautics

  2004 — 2009