Nikhila Obbineni
Forward-Deployed Engineer and former collegiate middle-distance runner
New York, New York, United States
Joined February 2026
Summary
Collegiate middle-distance athlete with measurable competitive results — Nikhila competed for the University of Pennsylvania in middle-distance track and cross-country events (800m, 1000m, 1500m, mile, cross-country distances) and recorded collegiate bests and meet results during 2019–2023. pennathletics+2
Early-career software engineer with industry internships and analyst experience — her background includes internships and early roles at major technology and finance organizations (Amazon SDE intern, Sparta Systems R&D intern, BlackRock software engineering roles) before joining Northslope as a Forward-Deployed Engineer. rocketreach
Forward-Deployed Engineer role at Northslope — listed as an FDE at Northslope Technologies, a company that emphasizes embedding engineers with customers to build mission-specific software on top of Palantir's platform; Nikhila is part of that FDE model at Northslope (starting 2025 per provided timeline). theorg+1
Academic engineering engagement and project work — while at Penn, Nikhila served as a teaching assistant for an ESE course and participated in senior design projects (including CrowdEffect and a virtual power plant project) demonstrating hands-on engineering experience. devpost
Community and extracurricular involvement — participated in fellowship work with Make A Play Foundation (MAP D-League fellow) during 2021–2022, indicating engagement beyond academics and athletics. rocketreach