diff --git a/default.nix b/default.nix
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..1ef8a22a59
--- /dev/null
+++ b/default.nix
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+(import (fetchTarball
+  "https://github.com/edolstra/flake-compat/archive/master.tar.gz") {
+    src = builtins.fetchGit ./.;
+  }).defaultNix
diff --git a/flake.lock b/flake.lock
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..8436f4cdfe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/flake.lock
@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+{
+  "nodes": {
+    "nixpkgs": {
+      "locked": {
+        "lastModified": 1640718479,
+        "narHash": "sha256-hm5yC3ynZE9bH564NmFdWv07RtCKr/fgT8Veh594j4M=",
+        "owner": "NixOS",
+        "repo": "nixpkgs",
+        "rev": "d53978239b265066804a45b7607b010b9cb4c50c",
+        "type": "github"
+      },
+      "original": {
+        "owner": "NixOS",
+        "repo": "nixpkgs",
+        "rev": "d53978239b265066804a45b7607b010b9cb4c50c",
+        "type": "github"
+      }
+    },
+    "root": {
+      "inputs": {
+        "nixpkgs": "nixpkgs"
+      }
+    }
+  },
+  "root": "root",
+  "version": 7
+}
diff --git a/flake.nix b/flake.nix
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..007d3c18d3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/flake.nix
@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+{
+  description = "openvdb";
+  inputs = {
+    # pick latest commit from stable branch and test it so no suprises
+    nixpkgs.url = "github:NixOS/nixpkgs/d53978239b265066804a45b7607b010b9cb4c50c";
+  };
+
+  outputs = inputs: {
+
+    defaultPackage.x86_64-linux = import ./openvdb.nix {
+      nixpkgs = inputs.nixpkgs;
+    };
+  };
+}
diff --git a/openvdb.nix b/openvdb.nix
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..e51028cebb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/openvdb.nix
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+{ nixpkgs, ... }:
+let
+  pkgs = import nixpkgs {
+    system = "x86_64-linux";
+    overlays = [ (import ./overlay.nix) ];
+  };
+in
+  with pkgs;
+  stdenv.mkDerivation {
+    name = "openvdb";
+    version = "9.0.0";
+
+  # https://nixos.org/nix/manual/#builtin-filterSource
+  src = builtins.filterSource
+  (path: type: lib.cleanSourceFilter path type
+  && baseNameOf path != "doc/*"
+  && baseNameOf path != "openvdb_houdini/*"
+  && baseNameOf path != "openvdb_maya/*"
+  && baseNameOf path != "pendingchanges/*"
+  && baseNameOf path != "tsc/*") ./.;
+
+  cmakeFlags =["-DOPENVDB_BUILD_VDB_VIEW=ON"];
+
+  # easily maxes out RAM on github actions or systems <64 GB
+  enableParallelBuilding = true;
+  nativeBuildInputs = [ cmake pkg-config ];
+
+    # required dependencies for downstream development
+    propagatedBuildInputs = [
+      openexr
+      tbb
+      c-blosc
+      boost175
+    ];
+
+    buildInputs = [
+      unzip jemalloc ilmbase
+      # for the optional VDB_VIEW binary opengl related dependencies:
+      libGL glfw3 x11 libGLU xorg.libXdmcp
+    ];
+
+  }
diff --git a/overlay.nix b/overlay.nix
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..be6a9bea9d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/overlay.nix
@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+final: prev: {
+  tbb = prev.stdenv.mkDerivation {
+    name="tbb";
+    version = "2021.4";
+
+    src = prev.fetchFromGitHub {
+      owner = "oneapi-src";
+      repo = "oneTBB";
+      rev = "v2021.4.0";
+      sha256 = "eJ/NQ1XkWWlioBu05zbtZ/EwVxCAQzz5pkkKgN4RB0Y=";
+    };
+
+    nativeBuildInputs = [ prev.pkgs.cmake prev.pkgs.pkg-config ];
+
+    makeFlags = prev.lib.optionals prev.stdenv.cc.isClang [
+      "compiler=clang"
+    ];
+
+    cmakeFlags =["-DTBB_TEST=OFF"];
+
+    enableParallelBuilding = true;
+
+    meta = with prev.lib; {
+      description = "Intel Thread Building Blocks C++ Library";
+      homepage = "http://threadingbuildingblocks.org/";
+      license = licenses.asl20;
+      longDescription = ''
+        Intel Threading Building Blocks offers a rich and complete approach to
+        expressing parallelism in a C++ program. It is a library that helps you
+        take advantage of multi-core processor performance without having to be a
+        threading expert. Intel TBB is not just a threads-replacement library. It
+        represents a higher-level, task-based parallelism that abstracts platform
+        details and threading mechanisms for scalability and performance.
+      '';
+      platforms = platforms.unix;
+      maintainers = with maintainers; [ thoughtpolice dizfer ];
+    };
+  };
+}
diff --git a/shell.nix b/shell.nix
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..9a25fabdb8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/shell.nix
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+(import (fetchTarball
+  "https://github.com/edolstra/flake-compat/archive/master.tar.gz") {
+    src = builtins.fetchGit ./.;
+  }).shellNix