Game systems designer and engineer, eleven years shipping software. Four years at Rockstar Games on Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto V, and Grand Theft Auto VI. Four years at Tencent’s Lightspeed LA as the first open-world systems designer on Last Sentinel. Now the founder and sole engineer of Vouch, which is live on the App Store and Google Play.
I am looking for my next team, in Toronto or remote. Write to me.
A word-of-mouth app that rewards people for recommending places to their friends. Live on the App Store and Google Play.
Built every part as the only engineer: the Flutter client, the Firebase backend (Auth, Firestore, Storage, and Cloud Functions in TypeScript), Stripe billing, and a React and TypeScript admin dashboard.
Bluetooth proximity detection: two phones in range find each other, and the recommendation passes between them.
Analytics written to Firebase Analytics and Firestore with personal data hashed, and exported to BigQuery. Export and erasure of a user’s data across the full data graph, covered by an automated test suite.
Fourteen GitHub Actions workflows: lint, tests, and builds for the app, the dashboard, and the functions, a 70% coverage gate on the functions, and a daily dependency scan.
The first open-world systems designer on Last Sentinel, an open-world action game set in a dystopian future Tokyo. Built its ambient systems and their pipelines from the ground up.
Designed the ambient population and built it in Unreal Engine 5 Blueprints: NPC behaviours, reactions, schedules, and interactions, with crowds, pedestrians, animals, and ambient vehicles.
Led a cross-functional team across three to eight features at a time, as the subject-matter expert and the link between engineering, design, art, animation, and production. Ran design reviews.
Onboarding buddy for more than five new teammates.
Every milestone was delivered on schedule across four years of production.
Systems and content for Red Dead Redemption 2, where most of the four years went, for Grand Theft Auto V, and for the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI. GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 have been played by more than 200 million people.
Built mission and ambient systems with the Design Director, and wrote ambient content: persistent character schedules, and side-quest content such as treasure hunts.
Scripted in Rockstar’s own engine, first in a Lua-based language and later in C#. Productive within weeks in a large codebase with no documentation.
Apr 2016 – Aug 2017
Software Developer, Relish Interactive
Toronto
Browser games in TypeScript and Phaser, playable on phones too, from the first idea to launch.
Safety-training games for a mining company, mostly 2D, in Unity and C#. Led project management on an Agile team of four.
Jan 2015 – May 2015
Game Programmer, Neon Mountain Games
Toronto
Physics-based movement and the level-building controls for Get on My Level, a party game in which the players build the level as they play. Shown at Toronto Level Up 2015.
Education
2014 – 2016
Diploma, Game Programming, George Brown College
Toronto
Dean’s List, GPA 3.6. Game director and lead programmer on the capstone projects.
2010 – 2013
B.Sc. Physics, McMaster University
Hamilton
In a computational physics course, simulated a galaxy in Fortran 90: a star cluster that formed its own spiral arms.
ROM Game Jam, Royal Ontario Museum
Toronto
Work selected for showcase at the museum.
Skills
Languages
TypeScript, Dart, C#, Lua, Python, SQL, C++ (coursework)
Game engines
Unreal Engine 5 (Blueprints), Unity, Rockstar’s own engine, Phaser
App and web
Flutter, Firebase, React, Stripe, Google Cloud, BigQuery, Docker