Nicole
Beaulieu

PhD · Engineering leader · Founder · Software-engineering researcher

Thirty-three years building production systems in regulated industries, and a doctorate spent formalizing what those years taught.

Nicole Beaulieu
The arc

For thirty-three years I built production systems in regulated industries: nearly two decades at IGT architecting certified casino-gaming platforms, then rising from Principal Engineer to Chief Technology Officer at the fintech Figure, where I co-invented the first blockchain-based mortgage registry and grew the engineering organization through rapid scale. Most recently I co-founded the embedded-finance startup Envoi as its CTO.

In December 2025 I completed a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, turning what those years taught into research the field can build on. Today I run PhiDo Labs, an independent software-engineering research studio, and keep building platforms for regulated domains.

By the numbers
0years building regulated software
0patents, issued and pending
0engineers led
0Top 50 Women in FinTech, 2024
0peer-reviewed papers
0citations · ResearchGate
0h-index · ResearchGate
Selected experience
Envoi, Inc.
2025–2026
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Embedded-finance platform opening private-capital access to small and mid-market firms, built on agentic AI and a proprietary underwriting model. Took the architecture from blank page to a working, API-first, event-driven system.

Figure Technology Solutions
2019–2025
Principal Engineer to Chief Technology Officer

Co-invented DART, the first blockchain-based mortgage assignment registry. Architected LEAP, a modular API-driven lending engine across four products. Scaled the engineering organization past 100 people, through Figure's path to its NASDAQ listing.

International Game Technology
1993–2012
Firmware Engineer to Software Architect to Engineering Manager

Nearly two decades architecting certified gaming platforms under per-jurisdiction regulation, treating compliance as a structural design constraint. The source of most of the patent portfolio.

Earlier
2013–2019
Principal & R&D engineering roles

PLAYSTUDIOS (social casino), Scientific Games (regulated-gaming R&D), and Intuit (enterprise software and engineering leadership).

Education
University of Nevada, Reno
2025
PhD, Computer Science & Engineering
Iowa State University
2018
MS, Human-Computer Interaction

Capstone: assistive reading technology for dyslexic readers, drawn from my own experience with dyslexia.

University of San Diego
1993
BA, Computer Science
Selected work
From Practice to Process: Formalizing API-First Design through Method Engineering
Doctoral dissertation · Computer Science & Engineering · University of Nevada, Reno · 2025 · ProQuest No. 32398063
Vibe Coding: A Multivocal Systematic Mapping Study
Beaulieu, Dascalu & Hand · SNPD 2025 · doi.org/10.1109/SNPD65828.2025.11254176
API Integrator: A UI Design and Code Automation Application Supporting API-First Design
Beaulieu, Dascalu & Hand · ACIT '22, ACM · doi.org/10.1145/3543895.3543939
API-First Design: A Survey of the State of Academia and Industry
Beaulieu, Dascalu & Hand · ITNG 2022, Springer · doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97652-1_10

Full research and publications at PhiDo Labs →

Recognition
Top 50 Women Leaders in FinTech, #14
The Financial Technology Report · 2024
International Women's Day Award
University of Nevada, Reno · 2022