AboutProjectsExperienceEventsContactPackagesSign In
Theme

See the deal before it’s a listing.

Parcels, zoning, permits and comps on one map — movement in your submarket, surfaced before it hits the listings.

Built and run for you by a seasoned AWS professional with 15+ years of geospatial and web software experience.

Book the free 10-minute fit callPackages & pricing

Also built for development teams and civic initiatives.

US-Based, Serving Globally+1 (949) 659-8650nico@nico-tek.comLinkedInAWS SkillsCoffee
The Expensive Part

What Fragmented Data Costs

An analyst spends hours every week pulling county portals, permit databases and MLS exports into a spreadsheet that’s stale the day it’s finished. That’s salary spent manually rebuilding a dataset that should refresh itself overnight — and it’s the cheap part of the problem. The expensive part is the site that trades while your team is still reconciling exports. Permit filings, rezoning applications and entitlement moves are public months before they surface anywhere else. The firms that see them first aren’t luckier — they’re looking at a different layer.

“We already pay for a data subscription.”

Those products tell you what already happened — closed comps, recorded sales, last quarter’s absorption. They’re rear-view mirrors, and every firm bidding against you is looking in the same one. Permit filings, rezoning applications and entitlement moves are public, structured, and months ahead of any of it. They’re just not aggregated for you — because aggregating them for your submarkets and your buy box isn’t a product anyone can sell at scale.

“Our GIS person can do this in ArcGIS Online.”

Sometimes true — and I’ll tell you when it is. What ArcGIS Online won’t do is run an unattended pipeline that pulls every county portal you care about on a schedule, normalizes their inconsistent schemas, and puts the result in front of your acquisitions team each morning with nobody maintaining it. I spent six years at Esri building exactly that layer of automation underneath their raster tile services. I know precisely where the platform stops and custom work starts.

“Custom software means a year of build and a dead product in two.”

Not how I work, and the structure protects you: the first working map ships in one to two weeks as a fixed-price proof-of-concept sprint. The code and data are yours from day one, and the platform runs in a dedicated AWS account I manage for you — transferable to your firm whenever you want it. If I disappear tomorrow, any competent engineer picks it up — nothing is locked in a vendor’s platform.

Why Nico Tek

Built for Property Decisions

Nicolas Roldos

Six years engineering satellite-imagery infrastructure at Esri. Fifteen-plus years shipping geospatial, web, and iOS software for government agencies, startups, and growing firms. A seasoned AWS professional who builds the platform, runs the cloud underneath it, and keeps both alive. All of it verifiable below.

A career across
  • Esri
  • Apollo Mapping
  • Naked Development
  • 7x24 Exchange SoCal
  • UC Irvine
  • Psomas Engineering
  • TRC Solutions
15+Years Shipping Software
6Years Engineering GIS at Esri
50+Projects Delivered
100%Code & Data Owned by You
Three Markets

One Platform, Three Markets

The same pipelines and maps, pointed at a different decision.

Property Investment

See the deal before it’s a listing.

Parcels, zoning, permits and comps on one map — movement in your submarket, surfaced before it hits the listings.

Starter kits: Deal Radar · Portfolio Map
See the kits →Start with one submarket →
Property Development

Lease the space before it’s built.

Interactive site plans, 3D renderings and neighborhood maps for developments in progress — architectural drawings become a place tenants and investors can walk through.

Starter kits: Site Feasibility Dashboard
See the kits →See Nesso Plaza →
Civic & Urban Planning

Win the funding before the vote.

Data-driven story maps for planners and civic initiatives — verifiable public data laid out on the map of the city itself, built to move councils, agencies and grant committees.

Starter kits: Zoning Explorer · Community Engagement Portal
See the kits →See LaXing →
The Offer

What You Get

Real prices, published. Every paid engagement credits toward the next larger one.

Proof-of-Concept Sprint

$1,500 – $3,500
1–2 weeks · fixed scope

Start with one submarket. One county — parcels, zoning and permits on a working map your team uses for real deals. If it doesn’t change how you source, we stop there and you keep the code.

How the sprint works →

Vertical Starter Kit

$7,500 – $12,000
3–4 weeks · productized

A fixed-price platform for your vertical — Deal Radar for acquisitions, Portfolio Map, Site Feasibility, Tenant Portal and more — running on AWS, fully managed for you.

Browse the kits →

Signal Retainer

from $750/mo
ongoing · cancel anytime

The platform stays current after launch: AWS managed and monitored, spending reported in plain English, data fresh, features shipped monthly — by the engineer who built it.

Retainer plans →
Track Record

Proof, Not Promises

Real systems, real clients, real scale — from career work to engagements running right now, verifiable at the links below or on the experience and projects pages.

LaXing Story Map — the opening chapter floating over a map of Los Angeles
LaXing full crossings map — every at-grade crossing on the A, E and K LinesLaXing What it Costs — the financing math for grade separation
Civic & Urban Planning

LaXing — Stuck at the Crossing

Own initiativeCitizen-led initiative · with collaborator Justin Levy · headed for the 2028 ballot
The ask
Make the case for grade-separating LA’s light rail — 223 street crossings — vivid enough to move voters, agencies, and funders.
The build
A scrollytelling story map: every at-grade crossing plotted from Metro and OpenStreetMap data, ten years of collision records, speed analyses, and the fully separated C Line as running proof — every claim cited to public sources.
Why it matters to your firm
When the case for funding lives on a map instead of in a 200-page PDF, councils and grant committees see the problem — and the fix — in two minutes.
  • 223 crossings mapped
  • Every stat publicly sourced
  • With collaborator Justin Levy
  • Live & ongoing
Explore the story map →
3D aerial rendering of Nesso Plaza at dusk, modeled from the architectural plans — rooftop terrace, skylight, and murals
Interactive 3D massing model of the Nesso Plaza campus and its H Street NE block, built from the architectural plansNesso Plaza homepage — rooftop view toward the Washington Monument behind the Nesso arch
Development & Spatial Design

Nesso Plaza

Paid clientClient engagement · H Street NE, Washington DC · ongoing
The ask
An indoor-outdoor marketplace filling 13 retail spaces needs tenants, investors, and the neighborhood to see the place before the doors open.
The build
The project’s web presence, a 3D aerial rendering, and an interactive 3D massing model of the whole campus — built in Claude Design from the architectural plans — plus maps placing the plaza minutes from DC’s most recognizable neighborhoods.
Why it matters to your firm
A development on paper has to sell itself before it exists. Spatial design does the leasing conversation’s heavy lifting — before opening day.
  • Interactive 3D campus model
  • Rendering from architectural plans
  • Neighborhood proximity maps
  • Ongoing engagement
Explore the 3D model →Visit Nesso Plaza →
World Imagery Wayback app — a timeline of imagery versions from 2014 to 2026 alongside satellite imagery of Beijing Daxing International Airport
Government & Enterprise GIS

World Imagery Wayback

EmployerEsri · Product Engineer II
The ask
A secured browser app for a government client to explore years of historical satellite imagery — on infrastructure that could not go down.
The build
React, Redux, and TypeScript over an imagery API, with assets on AWS S3 and processing on EC2 — part of six years engineering the automation, tiling schemes, and deployment behind Esri’s raster web map tile services.
Why it matters to your firm
The same discipline that serves satellite imagery to millions of map users is what runs your zoning, parcel, and comps layers without babysitting.
  • 6-year tenure at Esri
  • Trusted with a secured gov client
  • AWS S3 + EC2
  • Live on ArcGIS Living Atlas
View it live →
Image Hunter search interface — world map with place search, drawing tools, and a Find imagery panel for querying the global satellite archive
Spatial Search at Scale

Image Hunter

ContractApollo Mapping · Contract Engineer
The ask
Let customers of a satellite-imagery broker search a global archive of scenes by location and date, and trust what they find.
The build
Angular front end on a Python Flask API with PostgreSQL/PostGIS spatial queries; AWS S3, RDS, EC2, and API Gateway across staging and production, plus an imaging pipeline to catch and discard occluded raster tiles.
Why it matters to your firm
“Show me everything within this boundary, filtered by date and quality” is the same query behind parcel search, comps, and market screening.
  • Global imagery catalog
  • PostGIS spatial queries
  • Keys to production AWS
  • Core product, not side work
View it live →
Location Marketing · Mobile

Pushyy

ContractNaked Development · Contract Lead Developer
The ask
Take over an agency’s React Native geolocation marketing app and rebuild it native — without losing the product in the process.
The build
Led the rebuild in Swift and SwiftUI: new user flows, location services, map views, and a business-management interface for coupons and deals, shipped through CI/CD to TestFlight.
Why it matters to your firm
Inheriting someone else’s codebase and landing it safely is exactly the skill a retainer buys — your platform will not be my first rescue.
  • Brought in as outside lead
  • React Native → SwiftUI
  • Geofencing + push
  • CI/CD to TestFlight
Ongoing Digital Stewardship

7x24 Exchange SoCal

Volunteer boardBoard Director of Digital Services · 2024–present
The ask
A data-center industry nonprofit needed its web presence, SEO, and event marketing run like a product, not a side project.
The build
Full redesign on the StarChapter CMS with event calendars, Eventbrite integration, member registration, and sponsor showcases — plus ongoing SEO tuning and email campaigns, month after month.
Why it matters to your firm
This is what the Signal retainer looks like in practice: one accountable engineer keeping a platform visible, current, and converting.
  • Board seat since 2024
  • Full redesign shipped
  • SEO + events + email
  • Still running, 2+ years in
Visit the chapter site →
Full Project Archive →
Cloud, Handled

Managed for You. Never Locked In.

By default, I run the cloud so you don’t have to: a dedicated AWS account for your firm — provisioned, monitored, and maintained — with plain-English spending reports, so you always know exactly what your infrastructure costs and why.

The code and data are yours from day one, and the account transfers to your firm cleanly whenever you want it — in-house team, compliance requirement, or simple preference. No per-seat licenses that punish you for hiring, no renewal you can’t walk away from — and an honest answer to the question every serious buyer quietly asks: if something happens to me, you keep everything, and any competent engineer can pick it up.

Fair questions

What does a build like this actually cost?

The published prices are real: a proof-of-concept sprint runs $1,500–$3,500, vertical starter kits $7,500–$12,000, custom work $175–$250 an hour, and ongoing retainers start at $750 a month. Full breakdown on the packages page.

How long until we see something usable?

One to two weeks. The proof-of-concept sprint is fixed-scope by design: a working map with real data from a submarket you’re active in — not a slide deck.

We already have ArcGIS licenses — does that help?

Often, yes. I build on top of what you have when it’s the right call, and I’ll tell you when ArcGIS Online alone covers the need. Six years at Esri means I know exactly where the platform stops and custom work starts.

Do we need our own AWS account?

No — most clients don’t want one. I provision and manage a dedicated account for your firm and report on spend in plain English. If you’d rather hold the account yourself, that works too — ownership is an option on request, never a requirement.

Who maintains it after launch?

The Signal retainer: AWS account management, monitoring, spending reports, data freshness, and monthly feature work by the engineer who built the platform. You own the code and data either way.

Can we start with one submarket before committing to the portfolio?

That’s the recommended path. One county, one submarket, fixed price. If it doesn’t change how you source deals, we stop there and you keep the code.

The Process

How It Works

From a ten-minute call to a platform that stays current. Every paid step credits toward the next.

01

Free Fit Call

Ten minutes, video or phone. Bring a submarket or a problem; leave with a straight answer on whether it is worth building and which step comes next.

02

Strategy Session or POC Sprint

The first paid step: a $250 working session with a written action plan, or a one-to-two-week sprint that puts one county’s parcels, zoning and permits on a working map. Both credit toward what follows.

03

Starter Kit

A fixed-scope, fixed-price platform for your vertical, shipped in three to four weeks on a dedicated AWS account. You own the code and the data from day one.

04

Signal Retainer

After launch, the engineer who built it keeps it current: data refreshed, cloud monitored, spend reported in plain English, features shipped monthly. Cancel anytime.

Book the free fit call →Packages & pricing →

Put Your Submarket on One Map

Start small: a fixed-price sprint on one county runs $1,500–$3,500, ships in two weeks or less, and you keep the code either way. Not ready to spend? Book the free ten-minute fit call — come with a submarket, leave with a straight answer on whether this is worth building.

Send a Message

nico@nico-tek.com→
LinkedIn→
+1 (949) 659-8650→
Coffee→

Scan to connect on LinkedIn

PackagesContact Me