NICHOLAS ONG

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT · ENGINEERING · RENEWABLE ENERGY

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Experience

SENIOR MANAGER, PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, CREDIT CARD CORE
Capital One, 2025-PresentBuilding AI-native data infrastructure enabling autonomous analytical workflows and LLM-powered developer experiences. Designed and scaled event-driven streaming platforms powering real-time data products at the largest credit card issuer in the U.S.Focus: AI-ready cloud data infrastructure, Streaming data architecture (Kafka), Snowflake + Databricks lakehouse patterns, data governance and observability

SENIOR AI PRODUCT MANAGER
Docugami, 2022-PresentUsing foundation models to generate semantically-informed knowledge graphs from long-form, unstructured business documents. Built LLM-based knowledge extraction capabilities to frack valuable business insights and data from paragraphs into databases.Focus: Large Language Models (LLMs), Unstructured Data, Computer Vision, Knowledge Graphs, B2B SaaS, ONNX, Redis, Langchain, TensorRT

RESEARCH ENGINEER & PRODUCT MANAGER
Haply Robotics, 2020-2022Bringing human touch to the virtual world through haptic interfaces for surgical simulation and manual skills training. I partnered with developers, researchers, and customers to design intuitive experiences and refine robotics systems.Focus: Robotics, VR/AR Simulation, R&D, Deep Tech

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING RESEARCHER
McGill University, 2020-2021Conducted advanced research in vibration mechanics and machine condition monitoring, focusing on dynamic vibration absorbers for complex mechanical systems. Contributed to the development of a graduate-level vibration mechanics textbook while supporting instruction for core mechanical engineering coursework.Focus: Vibration Mechanics, Dynamic Systems, Condition Monitoring, Mechanical Modeling, Engineering Education, Applied Research

TURBINE ENGINEERING
Pratt and Whitney, RTX Corporation, 2019-2020Developed a unified thermo-mechanical fatigue lifing methodology for jet engine turbine blades, enabling more accurate prediction of failure modes and reducing annual maintenance costs by $4M. Supported analytical investigations of crack initiation and propagation in single-crystal superalloy turbine blades operating under extreme thermal and mechanical loads, and quantified damage mechanisms to assess next-generation manufacturing treatments for tomorrow’s turbine hardware.Focus: Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue, Turbine Engineering, Finite Element Analysis (ANSYS), Failure Mechanics, High-Temperature Materials, Aerospace Systems

NUCLEAR DESIGN ENGINEER
General Fusion, 2019-2020Designed, analyzed, and built an experimental test facility to study turbulent flow behavior of liquid metal vortices for advanced fusion reactor concepts. Enabled fluid dynamicists and plasma physicists to study flow stability, turbulence, and vortex dynamics under extreme operating conditions.Focus: Nuclear Fusion, Experimental Fluid Mechanics, Mechanical Design

THERMAL ENGINEER
Advanced Cooling Technologies, 2018-2018Designed and modeled a phase-change material (PCM) plate heat exchanger for thermal management of directed energy weapons, addressing transient, high-flux cooling challenges. Performed frequency-domain (FFT) analysis to optimize material selection and thermal response under pulsed energy loads.Focus: Thermal Systems, Phase-Change Materials, Heat Exchangers

What people say about me

Writing and Projects

PUBLICATIONSAdditional writing found at my dedicated blog page.Other writing:1) Why you should want to use sauerkraut to heat your roomWhether we, as human beings, choose to engage with the hubbub is entirely up to us. Whether we choose to ferment cabbage to make sauerkraut is also our choice to make.Instead of zooming out and taking in a macroscale jammed with the clash of ignorant armies at night, zoom in very close. You’ll see the exquisite details that fill us all with child-like wonder and the crazy applications that are wild enough that they might just work. Zoom in even closer and revel in the delights of exploration, and walk the halls of science like an ever-growing museum. Even the most insignificant of details will call out, telling you that “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Listen to them, those cabbages in the supermarket, those tiny stars in the sky.

2) Haply 2diy: an accessible haptic platform suitable for remote learning, paper presented at ICMI 2021This work introduces the Haply 2diy, a low-cost, grounded force feedback haptic device. This device is designed to provide hands-on laboratory experience for multimodal design by including the typically elusive sense of touch. The Haply 2diy is a two-degree-of-freedom kinesthetic haptic device that allows the user to feel forces when moving in the workspace.

3) On the Logarithmic Decrement, the Kelvin-Voigt Model, and Breast PainOur story begins, as most textbook-style stories do, considering a mass m on the ground. This mass is nothing special, and were it not the protagonist of this story, this mass would probably stay stationary on the ground, left to waste away amidst the crippling loneliness of inertia...From a basic harmonic oscillator to the millions of nodes on a finite element breast, mechanics pervades every aspect of physical simulation and modelling. Principles of mechanics can be seen at work in the construction of our bodies,
heard in the thrumming of jet engines, and felt in the cool of our air-conditioned houses. Though it doesn’t always make sense at first, mechanics can shed valuable insight on problems that seem insurmountable.

Books

Math of the Gospel, the first Biblical math workbook for middle and high school students
Jack the Jet Engine, a children’s book about the mechanisms of air-breathing turbofan machinery
Baby’s First Bessel, a children’s book about the use of Bessel functions on the playground. Buy here: Amazon.com link

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