I’ve built my 20-year game dev career in design leadership, technical design, and gameplay engineering. I have experience in C/C++, C#, Lua, Javascript, and Python, and I’ve shipped games on both Unity and Unreal.

I’m looking for full-time employment in the games industry as a design lead, technical designer, or gameplay engineer.

Rates are negotiable based on job type and duration, but will need to be competitive with Seattle-area norms. Lower rates may be available on a limited basis for indies and projects with a marked public benefit.

Remote work is strongly preferred; very occasional on-site presence and/or travel are negotiable, but full-time on-site is a non-starter at this time due to child care requirements.

Interested? Email me or find me on LinkedIn!

Skills

Engines: Unity Unreal

Languages: C++ C# Javascript Lua Typescript

Disciplines: Design Leadership Game Design Technical Design Game Writing Gameplay Engineering Web Design Music Composition

Other: Markdown HTML Git Perforce Confluence Jira Notion

Work experience

Highlights:

I’ve led multiple design teams, including creative direction, hiring, mentoring, and performance reviews
I’ve run a game dev business and understand creative/financial tradeoffs
I’ve developed frameworks and best practices for large cross-functional organizations
I’ve gained extensive experience with Unity and C#
I’ve shipped in Unreal and VR
I’ve built Unreal from source, and contributed a pull request to address a network timing issue

I excel at:

Force-multiplying design teams with goal-oriented and empathy-driven leadership
Building effective, sustainable development frameworks and best practices
Tenacity against difficult problems, both design and technical
Developer advocacy including technical writing, presentations, tutorials, etc.
Pushing boundaries and exploring new design spaces

Bungie

Design Lead • January 2020-June 2024 • Destiny 2

Led a technical design team that drove organization-level design consistency and technical standards for Destiny 2
Built tools and wrote reference docs to support those standards studio-wide C++/C#
Led a cross-functional team that designed and built the Banes system that launched with the Destiny 2: Revenant expansion

Read more: Destiny 2

RED Games

Senior Engineer • April 2017-November 2019 • LEGO Brawls, The Raft

Primary design and technical contributor on LEGO Brawls Unity/C#
Integrated determinsitic rollback networking strategy leveraging Photon Quantum
Designed and implemented best-in-class touch controls

TheGamer.com said: “Thanks to its superb touchscreen controls, LEGO Brawls is currently one of Apple Arcade’s best games for playing on-the-go.”

Primary design and technical contributor on The Raft Unreal/C++/Blueprint
Solved technical and logistical challenges for placing four players in VR into the same physical space (Oculus/Vive)
Implemented sophisticated VR avatar animation extrapolation from limited player inputs

Read more: LEGO Brawls | The Raft

castAR

Lead Design & Tech • July 2016-April 2017

Led a cross-function team prototyping games for the castAR platform Unity/C#
De-risked technical challenges due to building for in-development hardware
Established conventions for user interaction on a brand new AR platform

Utah Games Guild

Co-founder & Primary Coordinator • May 2014-March 2018

Co-founded the Utah Games Guild, a community organization dedicated to growing and energizing the Utah independent video game development scene
Organized several indie game showcases at major expos including Salt Lake Comic Con and Salt Lake Gaming Con
Managed a partnership with Youth Tech Hub and the city of Eagle Mountain to present an event designed to introduce kids and teens to game development
Coordinated quarterly Game Nights at The Leonardo

Read more: Utah Games Guild

Kickbomb Entertainment

Founder • March 2013-April 2018 • Legacy of the Elder Star

Founded an indie micro-studio and built Legacy of the Elder Star Unity/C#
Did all the design, programming, writing, music, and marketing
Hired an artist for all the art and animation
Currently available on Steam and itch.io for PC, Mac, and Linux

GamerPros.co said: “Legacy of the Elder Star knocks it out of the park, retaining the retro charm of the genre without shackling itself to the past.”

Read more: Legacy of the Elder Star

LightBox Interactive

Lead Game Designer • January 2009-March 2013 • Starhawk, PlunderNauts

Took Playstation 3 hit Starhawk from concept to completion as lead designer
Hired and managed an eight-person design team
Directed level design, combat design, and mission design
Developed technical standards and tools for mission and game mode development C++/Lua
Worked closely with Sony to develop the soundtrack’s unique Western flavor
Contributed to story development, cinematics, and in-game dialogue writing
Gave multiple press interviews and appearances to promote the game

G4TV awarded Starhawk Best Multiplayer of E3 in 2011

Led a cross-functional team to prototype a large-scale dynamic destruction feature for a new game pitch
Worked with studio leadership to establish the concept, design, and business model for PlunderNauts

Read more: Starhawk | PlunderNauts

Incognito Entertainment

Game Designer • January 2006-December 2008 • Warhawk + DLC

Shipped award-winning PS3 hit Warhawk
Built complex behaviors and in-game tools using a proprietary C-like scripting language
Tuned and balanced game controls, weapons, and general mechanics
Wrote flavor text for all in-game elements

Gaming Target named Warhawk its PS3-Exclusive Game of the Year

Assumed a lead design role for the game’s three DLC expansions
Contributed to expansion concept and product design
Whiteboxed expansion map layouts

Read more: Warhawk

Additional experience

While I don’t yet have commercial/paid web development experience, my website is built on a custom static site generator that I wrote from scratch as a project to build my knowledge in the web space.

Leverages vanilla Javascript and Node with minimal dependencies as a goal Javascript/Node
Translates Markdown source to standards-compliant static HTML output Markdown/HTML
Supports shortcodes for content automation and painless multimedia embeds
Automatically generates and updates an Atom feed
Validates input to catch issues like broken links, missing alt text, etc. before publication
Integrated differential deployment

Publications

I’ve written several articles about game development, informed by both my commercial and indie experiences.

Soundtracks

I’ve written digital music since 2004. I primarily use Reason with an Arturia KeyLab 88 MkII.

Legacy of the Elder Star:

Bloxx:

🎵 Title
🎵 Home
🎵 Starfield
🎵 Full Moon
🎵 Lonely Wormhole
🎵 Gaseous Cloud
🎵 Dead Planet
🎵 Nebula
🎵 Supernova
🎵 Anomaly

Other pieces:

🎵 Micro.Bit
🎵 Soul Burn
🎵 Tear It Down
🎵 TRI
🎵 TRI Again

Free games

I’ve made a bunch of small hobby games, game jams, and experiments, collected here for posterity: