Born in Mainz in 1968, Nikolas Hülbusch studied Theatre, Film and Television, as well as Slavic studies, at Bochum (Germany) and Katowice (Poland) Universities from 1989 to 1995. He published several articles and two books on documentary and feature film history.

After first experiences in various TV companies, he joined the Documentary Co-Production & Development team at ZDF Enterprises in 1997. In 2001, he took over a new position as project manager for documentary co-production. In this capacity, Nikolas Hülbusch negotiated numerous wildlife, history and science documentary co-productions with partners including the BBC, Discovery, National Geographic, The History Channel, RTI, Channel 4, France 5, as well as distribution mandate deals with numerous international factual production companies such as Pixcom, ITN Factual, Wild Fury, Essential Media, Stornoway etc. In 2013, he became the director of ZDFE.unscripted within the restructured ZDFE.unscripted genre team. His remit still includes international co-productions and distribution agreements, as well as the licensing of VoD rights in Germany and abroad.