Nick Kubasak joined Black Mountain Software (BMS) this year as Director of Engineering, bringing with him experience across education, insurance, private equity, and finance. By his own count, he’s held nearly every role software engineering has to offer along the way. What he cares about most, though, has less to do with the title and more to do with how he feels at the end of the day.
Before joining BMS, Nick’s last job had him building housing software for Public Housing Authorities. The work put him in front of small, independent local governments, the kind that are underserved and stretched thin, and he watched firsthand how making their jobs a little easier freed them up to do more for the people in their communities.
It was the first time in his career that he felt like his work mattered beyond the paycheck, and it’s a feeling he’s chasing again at BMS, where the customers are small towns and local governments doing that same essential work, often with a fraction of the staff and budget of a bigger city.
A fixer by trade
Nick’s last few jobs all had one thing in common: teams in the middle of big transitions, looking for someone to help modernize and move things forward. He’s spent the last five or six years doing exactly that, modernizing legacy code, tools, and habits, often all at the same time. Black Mountain Software gave him plenty to work with.
“We’ve got legacy technology and legacy processes,” he says, “so I get to modernize things and start making a difference.” He is goal-oriented and challenge-driven, and a situation like that, where there’s plenty of opportunity to modernize, plays directly to what motivates him.
A former colleague once told Nick that “using our software should be the easiest part of a customer’s day,” and the line stuck with him enough that he brings it up as the measure behind nearly every decision his team makes.
What customers should expect
Nick is already digging into the parts of BMS software that customers have flagged as sources of friction. The billing wizard, which he’s the first to admit isn’t where it needs to be, is getting rebuilt from the ground up. The utility billing move-in and move-out wizard is dropping from roughly 30 clicks down to 10 or 15. On the SAMSID (Special Assessment Manager and Special Improvement District) side, a new wizard will fully automate parcel combination math, cutting a process that used to take staff 30 to 40 minutes by hand down to two clicks.
None of that happens without changing how his team works day to day, and that’s where the second part of his plan comes in. His team is automating the build process and working toward a predictable release schedule, something closer to a monthly patch day, so customers know what to expect and when. AI has a role in that work too, speeding up parts of development, though Nick is careful about how he frames it. “We’re not here to replace developers with AI. We’re here to augment developers with AI,” he says.
Customer feedback drives most of the roadmap. As Nick puts it, his team doesn’t use the software every day, but customers do, and they get used to working around its quirks. He doesn’t think they should have to. Regular conversations between his engineers and BMS’s support and product teams keep that feedback flowing straight into what gets built next, and it’s a loop he plans to keep tightening as more of these projects roll out.
Off the clock
Away from BMS, Nick is a native Ohioan who’s called Jacksonville, Florida home for more than 20 years, the result of a six-month contract job that never really ended. He started college at Ohio State before transferring to finish his degree, and he met his wife, a Florida Gator, at a bar during an Ohio State-Florida national championship game, which still makes for good-natured rivalry at home.
Summers mean scuba diving. Winters mean ski trips to Colorado, with Steamboat as his favorite spot, though he’s also skied Vail, Breckenridge, Copper, and Big Sky in Montana. In his 40s he’s developed what he calls old man habits, including a newfound pride in his lawn that his 30-year-old self would find baffling. He and his wife share their home with a 15-year-old Westie named Alli, full name Alli Gator, a nod to his wife’s alma mater.
Nick will be at the first-ever Black Mountain Software User Conference this October. For him, it’s a chance to do what he says he enjoys most: sitting down with clients face to face, hearing what isn’t working, and figuring out how to fix it.
Welcome to Black Mountain Software, Nick.