Dave Castelnuovo

Founding engineer · since 2001

Founding engineer who takes an ambitious idea all the way to a shipped, end-to-end product.

About me

I turn ambitious ideas into successful products.

  • Created Pocket God. Over 8 million copies sold.
  • Led engineering for Kibeam. 300,000+ devices distributed.
  • Built the foundational technology for 7 ventures.
  • Engineered products for Google, Sony, Yahoo, and EA.
  • Use AI to build faster without sacrificing quality.

Hands-on engineer with product vision. Can bring or build a team.

Have an ambitious idea? Let's talk.

  • Founding engineer since 2001
  • Architect and hands-on engineer
  • AI, agentic development, generative audio

Highlights

  • 300k+: Children with a reading wand
  • 2 at 10 fps: Neural nets on one ESP32
  • 2 hours: Designer idea to finished activity
  • Since 2001: Building products end to end

Experience

34 years of building across generations of technology. From game consoles to AI, each era brought new platforms, new challenges, and new things to invent.

Agentic developer tools (Mar 2026 – present)

Building AI tools that let me work on many engineering projects simultaneously without sacrificing quality.

Skullet: multi-agent session mesh

Bolt Creative · Mar 2026 – present

Skullet lets me manage many software projects and codebases simultaneously, with teams of AI agents doing the engineering work.

  • Coordinates AI agents across multiple projects, allowing development to progress simultaneously.
  • Keeps agents working through implementation, testing, and review without constant supervision.
  • Built a persistent multi-agent session mesh with durable identities, roles, messaging, and recovery across restarts. Agents can delegate work, communicate, and resume without losing their responsibilities.
  • Developed a deterministic workflow engine that orchestrates autonomous development through specification, implementation, testing, and review, with human approval gates.
  • Built a cross-repository orchestration system that lets agents discover and coordinate work across Git repositories and worktrees.
  • Engineered a high-performance terminal using Rust, FlatBuffers, and a custom WebGL renderer, achieving 120 Hz performance comparable to Kitty.
  • Created a Rust MCP server and Claude Code plugin exposing agent spawning, delegation, messaging, and recovery directly to AI agents.
  • 12+: Development projects running in parallel

Skills: Systems Architecture, Agentic AI, Multi-Agent Orchestration, Custom Agent Harness, Autonomous Development, Claude Code, MCP, Rust

Peepers: agent session observability & eval

Bolt Creative · Mar 2026 – present

A real-time observability and evaluation system for AI coding agents that detects mistakes, corrects behavior, and measures whether changes to agent instructions actually improve outcomes.

  • Detects mistakes and corrects agent behavior during development, before problems compound.
  • Measures whether changes to agent instructions, skills, and workflows actually improve performance.
  • Reveals wasted effort, repeated work, and inefficiencies in agentic development.
  • Built a real-time monitoring and intervention system that detects instruction violations and injects corrective feedback into active Claude Code sessions.
  • Developed a configurable evaluation engine combining deterministic rules, Git-aware checks, and LLM-based judgment to identify problematic agent behavior.
  • Built an analytics platform using DuckDB to investigate agent performance, wasted effort, repeated testing, and development costs.
  • Created an evaluation framework to measure whether changes to agent instructions, skills, and rules actually improve behavior over time.
  • Engineered a lightweight session indexing system that stores metadata and byte offsets while reading full transcripts directly from source logs on demand.
  • 83%: Instruction violations corrected

Skills: Agentic AI, Agent Observability, LLM Evals, Agent Reliability, Custom Agent Harness, Claude Code, MCP, TypeScript

Kinoo & Kibeam (Oct 2019 – Sep 2026)

Created the core technology and led engineering across four generations of connected products.

Agent Wand: real-time agentic platform

Kibeam · 2025 – Sep 2026

Real-time agentic platform. The wand streams a child’s voice and camera frames to the backend, where an agent graph generates activities in real time.

  • Activities generated on the fly for books, toys, and real-world objects
  • Designers take an activity from concept to complete in 2 hours
  • Classical ML, asset caching, and routing cut LLM and voice spend per child
  • Designed the platform around creative independence, giving content designers direct control over agent behavior, prompts, and activities without engineering involvement.
  • Designed and built the agent-graph backend: graphs that mix LLM, vision ML, RAG, and real-time audio nodes.
  • Audio engine mixes generative speech with pre-canned SFX and background music. LLM inserts audio tags with general description. RAG is used to find the nearest match from a library of thousands of audio files.
  • Combined deterministic logic, classical ML, and signal processing with generative AI to improve reliability, control costs, and keep experiences safe and on-task.
  • Eval: LLM-as-judge with deterministic scoring rules, multi-model consensus, and a human-alignment loop that rewrites the rubric. The same pipeline evaluates generative voice cloning.
  • Observability: live wand monitor with replay and runtime parameter tuning; every turn is traced and debuggable.
  • Content creation tools are Claude Code native.
  • 2 hours: Designer concept to finished activity

Skills: Agentic AI, LLM, RAG, Agent graphs, Evals, Observability, Computer vision, Classical ML, Generative voice, Claude Code, MCP, Custom Agent Harness, Full stack, FastAPI / Python, WebSockets, React, Firmware / C++

Agentic engineering process

Kibeam · Mar 2025 – Sep 2026

Transformed Kibeam into an AI-first organization, improving every aspect of product development: speed, quality, and reliability.

  • Reduced stability issues by 75% with less than half the original engineering team.
  • Enabled designers and producers to implement features directly, freeing engineers for more complex work.
  • Established the company’s agentic development process: spec → plan → implement → TDD → review → human smoke test.
  • Designed workflows that scale autonomy to the complexity of the problem, reserving focused engineering attention for difficult architectural decisions.
  • Built a custom Claude Code harness with MCP integrations, cross-repo orchestration across Git and Perforce, and self-validation loops for autonomous development.
  • Created a hardware-in-the-loop test harness that lets Claude test its own code on production devices.
  • Drove team-wide adoption through continuous improvements to workflows, tooling, and engineering practices.
  • 1 week → 2 hours: To create a new playable game for the Agent Wand

Skills: Claude Code, Agentic Test Driven Development, Custom Agent Harness, MCP, Developer tooling, Hardware-in-the-loop

Kibeam Reading Wand · New Worlds Reading Initiative

Kibeam, with University of Florida · New Worlds Reading Initiative · 2023 – Sep 2026

A wand that turns a book into a LeapPad-like experience, helping kids in grades K–3 build foundational reading skills through interactive play. On-device computer vision recognizes elements on the page to drive interactive activities.

  • Wands distributed to 300k+ children with the University of Florida
  • Content tooling cut the time for producing each book from 3 months to 3 weeks
  • Designed and built our firmware activity engine and tooling to run models that recognize books, spreads within each book, and objects and text on each page.
  • The activity engine combines audio, gestures, animation, and ML results into an engaging experience for kids.
  • Heavily modified low-level TensorFlow Lite Micro and camera driver code to run two CV models simultaneously at 10 fps on an ESP32.
  • Content tooling that cut production cost: page transcription and segmentation, and generative speech for play testing.
  • 3 months to 3 weeks: Content development time savings

Skills: Embedded C/C++, ESP32, TensorFlow Lite Micro, Computer vision, Machine Learning, Firmware, Content tooling, Full Stack, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework, Python, Svelte, Unity

Kinoo Magic Wand

Kinoo · 2022 – 2023

A self-contained kids’ hardware product (ages 3–7): motion-based activities with audio and LED animation, plus a companion book with a collection of wand enabled games.

  • Turned a peripheral into a standalone product
  • Non-engineers author activities; the device runs them
  • Turned the Kinoo Controller from a peripheral into a self-contained device by designing and building the firmware activity engine from scratch.
  • Architected a content-driven platform where non-engineers could create and deploy new activities without firmware changes. Built the authoring tools, content pipeline, and device runtime.
  • Embedded C/C++ on ESP32: gestures, IMU, audio, and the full content delivery system.

Skills: Embedded C/C++, ESP32, Firmware, Bluetooth, IMU, Engine development, Content tooling, Unity

Kinoo Connect + Kinoo Controller

Kinoo · 2019 – 2022

A video-calling app that helps grandparents and grandkids connect through shared play, using a custom motion controller.

  • Play comes to life by turning live video into characters, expressions, and story elements.
  • Mentoring system that helps grandparents build stronger relationships with their grandkids.
  • Reduced graphics memory requirements by 99% compared to heavily compressed bitmap equivalents.
  • Built a real-time Unity engine combining Twilio video calls with Photon multiplayer to power shared interactive experiences.
  • Built a custom SVG animation engine in Unity that composites live video into animated artwork while delivering crisp, Retina-quality graphics.
  • Developed a custom motion controller inspired by PlayStation Move.
  • Turned the iPad camera into a motion-tracking system using the wand’s three LED orbs to bring physical movement into the experience.
  • Built a custom Unity plugin to stream controller inputs and motion sensor data over Bluetooth for responsive, real-time interaction.

Skills: Unity, C#, Twilio, Photon, Computer vision, Bluetooth, IMU, Multiplayer, iOS, Android

XR, eye tracking, & mobile (May 2014 – Oct 2020)

Invented foundational technology and new interaction techniques for emerging products, spanning volumetric capture, computer vision, eye tracking, and spatial computing. Combined creative prototyping with deep systems engineering for startups and clients including Google, Capital One, and Jaunt XR.

Emerging technology & product innovation: Google, Capital One, Jaunt XR

Founding Engineer & Architect

Action Face · Jun 2019 – Oct 2020

Built the core 3D scanning and reconstruction technology for a startup that transforms iPhone face scans into personalized, 3D-printed action figures.

  • Created the foundational technology that enabled Action Face’s personalized action-figure product.
  • Turned consumer phone scans into usable 3D character geometry, eliminating the need for specialized scanning equipment.
  • Built a facial reconstruction pipeline combining 3D scanning, facial landmark detection, and complex mesh processing.
  • Developed algorithms to seamlessly merge scanned facial geometry with customizable heads, hairstyles, and bodies.
  • Created shader-based techniques to clean up scanned facial textures for realistic rendering and 3D printing.

Skills: Founding Engineering, Computer Vision, 3D Reconstruction, Geometry Processing, Facial Landmark Detection, Shader Development, Product Prototyping

Lead Engineer

Jaunt XR · Feb 2018 – Jun 2019

Developed Jaunt’s volumetric capture toolchain, transforming footage from eight depth cameras into animated 3D geometry. Also owned the streaming, decoding, and rendering systems for its cross-platform XR player.

  • Turned synchronized depth-camera captures into animated, volumetric 3D performances.
  • Supported XR playback across Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS through native and Unity integrations.
  • Built a volumetric capture pipeline using eight Intel depth cameras, including multi-camera calibration and ML-assisted reconstruction.
  • Developed the processing pipeline to combine depth-camera data into point clouds and convert them into animated 3D geometry.
  • Owned the XR player’s streaming, hardware video decoding, and rendering pipelines.
  • Maintained native and Unity playback compatibility across four operating systems.
  • Integrated ARToolkit with ARKit camera frames, combining marker detection with 6DoF tracking.

Skills: Volumetric Capture, Computer Vision, 3D Reconstruction, Machine Learning, C++, Unity, Video Streaming, XR

Architect, Lead Engineer

FS Studio at Google Daydream · Dec 2016 – Feb 2018

Prototyped next-generation XR computing experiences at Google, bringing desktop applications into a spatial workspace and exploring eye tracking as a new way to interact with them.

  • Brought individual Windows applications into a virtual 3D workspace, creating the experience of multiple spatial monitors.
  • Combined eye tracking, keyboard, and pointer input to explore practical productivity workflows in XR.
  • Advanced precision gaze interaction for small interface targets despite natural eye movement and tracking limitations.
  • Built a real-time application streaming pipeline that captures individual Windows application windows, compresses them using ETC2/LZ4, and renders them as independent spatial panels in an XR headset.
  • Heavily customized Chromium Embedded Framework to support remote application rendering and interaction.
  • Architected a Unity eye-tracking SDK for use by other teams within Google.
  • Developed experimental interaction techniques combining gaze, keyboard, and pointer input to make desktop productivity practical in XR.
  • Investigated methods for precise gaze selection below the roughly 1° natural eye-movement range, enabling interaction with small UI targets.
  • Integrated and prototyped experimental XR hardware, including custom peripherals and embedded systems.

Skills: Spatial Computing, Eye Tracking, XR Prototyping, Systems Architecture, Real-Time Streaming, Video Compression, Unity, C++, Hardware Prototyping

Architect, Lead Engineer

Eyefluence · Apr – Dec 2016

Explored new ways to interact with AR/VR through eye tracking, developing UX prototypes and the machine learning tools needed to make gaze-based interaction practical.

  • Demonstrated new interaction models using eye tracking instead of traditional controllers.
  • Enabled more accurate, personalized gaze interaction through ML training and on-device calibration.
  • Created a cross-platform foundation for eye-tracking prototypes across multiple XR headsets.
  • Reimagined gaze-based typing with a swipe-style keyboard that uses machine learning to interpret continuous eye movements instead of requiring individual key selection.
  • Designed and built interactive prototypes exploring gaze-based navigation, selection, and text input.
  • Developed data collection tools for training ML-based eye-tracking models, including live per-user calibration and fine-tuning.
  • Architected a cross-platform Unity framework for deploying eye-tracking experiences across different XR devices.
  • Integrated eye-tracking hardware through Bluetooth and serial interfaces, and rearchitected the tracker-to-application communication layer.
  • Developed an ML-powered gaze keyboard that recognizes intended words from continuous eye-movement patterns, eliminating the need for dwell-based key selection.

Skills: Eye Tracking, Human-Computer Interaction, UX Prototyping, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Unity, XR, Hardware Integration

Client Architect, Lead Engineer

Capital One · Jun – Nov 2015

Two experimental fintech projects exploring how game design and rich interactive experiences could help customers make better financial decisions and personalize their banking products.

  • Turned savings goals and debt reduction into a visual world that evolves with the customer’s financial progress.
  • Created an interactive card customization experience for mobile devices and kiosks.
  • Designed and developed a rich 3D environment where characters and surroundings evolve as customers save money and pay down debt.
  • Built an interactive card designer with customizable materials, decals, and handwritten signatures.
  • Prototyped experiences that brought game design principles into financial products.

Skills: Product Prototyping, Gamification, Interactive 3D, UX Design, Unity, Fintech

Pocket God (2009 – Nov 2013)

Created Pocket God, a breakout iPhone hit that sold over 8 million copies and remains in the monthly App Store top 25 more than 17 years after its launch. Built an enduring franchise spanning games, comics, and toys through inventive game design, custom engine development, and rapid iteration.

Pocket God: Co-Creator, Lead Engineer & Game Designer

Bolt Creative · 2009 – 2012

A mischievous sandbox game where players act as a god, experimenting with an island full of interactive characters, surprising reactions, and hidden discoveries. Built the first version in just one week, then expanded it into an evolving world of games and experiences.

  • Sold 8 million copies and held the #1 App Store position for a full month.
  • Expanded into two spin-off games, a 26-issue comic series, and a toy line.
  • Released 47 content updates over four years, including 14 consecutive weekly updates.
  • Expanded to Android, Windows Phone, Kindle, and Facebook.
  • Designed and built a custom OpenGL 2D engine in Objective-C, powering hundreds of interactions across an evolving sandbox world.
  • Created a scripting system for rapidly developing complex interactive sequences and new game mechanics.
  • Built a Flash-to-OpenGL animation pipeline using custom JSFL tools, allowing artists to bring layered animations directly into the game.
  • Developed a texture streaming system that eliminated loading screens between islands despite 164 texture atlases.
  • Architected the sandbox interaction system to support continuous feature development while keeping complexity manageable and stability high.
  • 8M: Copies sold

Skills: Product Development, Game Design, Custom Engine, iOS, Objective-C, OpenGL, Interactive Systems, Rapid Prototyping

Pocket God: Journey to Uranus: Lead Engineer & Game Designer

Bolt Creative · Feb 2010 – Oct 2011

The first Pocket God spin-off takes the pygmies into space with larger, more elaborate mini-games inspired by classic arcade games, combining 2D and 3D visuals in a custom game engine.

  • Expanded Pocket God into its first standalone spin-off.
  • Evolved the original engine to support larger, more ambitious games and hybrid 2D/3D environments.
  • Refactored and expanded the original Pocket God engine in Objective-C and OpenGL to support a new generation of mini-games.
  • Combined 3D planetary environments with layered 2D artwork to create a distinctive visual style.
  • Designed and implemented arcade-inspired game mechanics across multiple standalone experiences.

Skills: Game Design, Lead Engineering, Custom Engine, OpenGL, Objective-C, 2D/3D Rendering, iOS

Pocket God: Ooga Jump: Lead Engineer & Game Designer

Bolt Creative · Feb – Nov 2013

Expanded one of Pocket God’s most popular mini-games into a standalone arcade game, with polished animation, rich visuals, and a custom engine optimized for seamless play on mobile devices.

  • Delivered a visually rich game with no loading screens after the initial launch.
  • Kept initial load times under five seconds despite extensive high-resolution artwork.
  • Built a custom texture-streaming system that dynamically loads and unloads 122 high-resolution texture atlases to manage memory without interrupting gameplay.
  • Extended the Objective-C/OpenGL engine to support rich animations, customizable artwork, and complex interactive sequences.
  • Designed a virtual currency system using Keychain and iCloud instead of a dedicated backend, reducing infrastructure complexity and operating costs.
  • Integrated real player identities and scores into interactive gameplay, alongside multiplayer challenges and Game Center support.

Skills: iOS, Custom Engine, OpenGL, Objective-C, Graphics Optimization, Memory Management, Game Design

Pocket God: The Comic: Co-Creator & Story Developer

Ape Entertainment · Jan 2010 – Oct 2013

A 26-issue comic book series developed with Ape Entertainment, expanding the Pocket God universe with new characters, adventures, and stories.

  • Became one of Ape Entertainment’s best-selling comic series, outperforming licensed properties from major entertainment franchises.
  • Expanded Pocket God into a successful 26-issue comic series.
  • Co-created the comic series and developed the overarching storylines.
  • Plotted and outlined all 26 issues, collaborating closely with writers and artists.

Skills: IP Development, Creative Direction, Story Development, Brand Extension, Publishing

Flash & the early web (Jun 1999 – Sep 2009)

Brought low-level game engineering expertise to Flash, pushing the platform far beyond conventional web applications. Invented custom engines and architectures for technically ambitious games and products, including the foundational technology behind startups like World Golf Tour.

Founding Engineer & Game Architect

World Golf Tour · May 2006 – Sep 2009

Invented and built the core game engine that World Golf Tour built its business around, pushing Flash far beyond conventional browser games to deliver photorealistic golf courses, complex 3D geometry, multiplayer gameplay, and real-time video-based characters.

  • Built the core technology that World Golf Tour launched its business around.
  • Created a realistic golf experience using thousands of photographs and precise 3D course geometry.
  • Reduced client memory requirements from 1.5 GB to 250 MB, making the content-rich experience practical in Flash.
  • Architected a custom game engine combining 3D terrain data with 3,000+ photographs per hole, each positioned using its own 3D transform.
  • Developed a course visualization system that accurately aligns interactive objects and terrain features with real-world photography.
  • Designed and implemented four-player multiplayer gameplay and contributed to the content pipeline for courses, avatars, and equipment.
  • Built customizable avatars using layered full-motion video rendered at 60 fps.
  • Optimized asset loading and Flash memory management, reducing RAM consumption by approximately 83%.
  • 83%: Reduction in memory usage

Skills: Systems Architecture, Founding Engineering, Custom Game Engine, 3D Rendering, Performance Optimization, Multiplayer, Flash / ActionScript, Content Pipelines

Flash ActionScript Architect

Yahoo · Feb 2005 – Jun 2006

Architected a rapid UI prototyping platform that enabled Yahoo product teams to quickly explore, iterate, and test new interface concepts with focus groups.

  • Built FlickrMaps on Yahoo’s unfinished Flash Maps API, demonstrating new mapping capabilities ahead of its public launch.
  • Engineered the Yahoo Digital Home TV prototype presented at CES 2006, helping shape the business unit’s product strategy.
  • Established a rapid prototyping framework adopted across Yahoo product teams.
  • Architected a reusable UI prototyping framework using Flex, Flash, and ActionScript.
  • Built FlickrMaps in collaboration with Yahoo Maps and Adobe, integrating Flickr photography with geolocated map views on a pre-release API.
  • Developed interactive TV interfaces for Digital Home, collaborating with designers and product leadership.
  • Created workflows that helped engineers across Yahoo adopt Flex for rapid prototyping.

Skills: Developer Tooling, Rapid Prototyping, UI Architecture, Product Experimentation, Flex, Flash / ActionScript

Flash Engineer

Sony · Jan 2004 – May 2005

Engineered interactive UI prototypes for Sony’s next-generation products, including early PlayStation 3 interface concepts, the Sony Connect music store, and connected-home television experiences.

  • Developed early PlayStation 3 UI prototypes to explore future console experiences.
  • Helped Sony evaluate interface concepts for digital music and connected-home products.
  • Built interactive Flash prototypes to demonstrate and evaluate emerging product concepts.
  • Developed interface prototypes for Sony Connect’s second-generation music store.
  • Explored television-based user interfaces for connected-home applications.

Skills: Rapid Prototyping, UI Engineering, Product Innovation, Game Consoles, Consumer Electronics, Flash / ActionScript

UI & Systems Engineer

Electronic Arts · Mar – Sep 2004

Rearchitected the Flash UI system for The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age on PlayStation 2 and Xbox, combining C++ and Flash to deliver rich interfaces within the strict memory and performance constraints of a 60 fps console game.

  • Reduced the Flash runtime’s memory footprint by approximately 70% through project-specific modifications to EA’s internal player.
  • Developed a hybrid C++/Flash architecture that moved computational work into native code, leaving Flash responsible primarily for presentation.
  • Modified EA’s internal Flash player to reduce runtime memory consumption.
  • Designed a hybrid architecture with C++ handling application logic and data processing, and Flash serving as a lightweight view layer.
  • Optimized SWF assets and runtime behavior to support responsive interfaces within a 60 fps console game.
  • 70%: Reduction in Flash runtime memory

Skills: Console Engineering, C++, Flash / ActionScript, Runtime Integration, Performance Optimization, SWF Internals, UI Engineering, PlayStation 2 / Xbox

Project Lead & Lead Engineer

Sony Pictures · May 2003 – Jun 2004

Led the complete development of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy games for Sony Pictures, serving as the primary client liaison, managing the engineering and art teams, and personally building the custom Flash/C++ technology that enabled standalone Windows distribution.

  • Delivered two fully outsourced game projects, managing development from client coordination through release.
  • Shipped both browser-based and standalone Windows versions.
  • Created a custom native application architecture that packaged and protected Flash game content for desktop distribution.
  • Built a custom Windows application host using C++, MFC, and ActiveX to run Flash games outside the browser.
  • Designed an encrypted asset package containing Flash, XML, and supporting files.
  • Intercepted Flash resource requests through a custom plugin, transparently serving assets from the encrypted package.
  • Led development across both games and helped rescue additional delayed Sony Pictures titles.

Skills: Technical Leadership, Game Engineering, C++, MFC, ActiveX, Custom Runtime Integration, Content Protection, Flash / ActionScript

Game Prototyping Engineer

LeapFrog · Mar – Jun 2003

Developed interactive game prototypes for LeapFrog’s Leapster handheld, using Flash to rapidly explore concepts for an educational gaming platform.

  • Created playable game prototypes for evaluation on the Leapster platform.
  • Built interactive Flash prototypes targeting the Leapster’s Flash-based environment.
  • Translated early game concepts into playable experiences for product exploration.

Skills: Rapid Prototyping, Game Engineering, Educational Games, Handheld Gaming, Flash / ActionScript

Game Engine Architect

WagerWorks · Dec 2000 – Jan 2003

Brought in to rescue an unstable, delayed online gaming platform for MGM/Mirage-backed startup WagerWorks. Stabilized and shipped the initial product, then architected a new game engine to dramatically simplify development and launch of future games.

  • Stabilized and shipped a delayed product that had been struggling with reliability and development bottlenecks.
  • Replaced a cumbersome game-development pipeline with a reusable engine that reduced the cost and complexity of launching new games.
  • Enabled advertising and sponsorship capabilities within a fully Flash-based gaming platform.
  • Refactored the original Flash client and architected its next-generation game engine and development pipeline.
  • Designed client/server security protections to prevent cheating and disclosure of game outcomes before bets were placed.
  • Integrated a Flash front end with a Java backend.
  • Developed a way to serve DoubleClick advertising inside a fully Flash-based application, overcoming limitations of the advertising technology at the time.
  • Designed extensible systems for integrating promotions and sponsorships into games.

Skills: Game Engine Architecture, Systems Architecture, Platform Engineering, Security Engineering, Technical Turnaround, Flash / ActionScript, Java, Content Pipelines

Consoles & PC (Jul 1992 – Jun 1999)

From my first engineering job, I took ownership of ambitious, low-level technical challenges—from recreating ClayFighter for Sega Genesis to engineering the Sega Channel BIOS. Built custom engines, rendering systems, and compression technology across console and PC platforms, earning patents along the way.

Lead Engineer

Zono · Mar 1995 – Jun 1997

Developed custom graphics, animation, and video compression technology for PC and Sega Saturn games, solving demanding rendering and performance challenges using C++ and assembly.

  • Developed 3D animation technology for Metal Fatigue, published by Psygnosis.
  • Created a custom lossy video compression system for Sega’s Mr. Bones.
  • Built a BSP-based polygon culling system for Ringman, a SegaSoft proof of concept.
  • Designed and implemented sophisticated 3D animation interpolation in C++ and assembly.
  • Engineered a BSP polygon culling algorithm to optimize 3D rendering.
  • Developed a custom lossy full-motion-video compression system for Sega Saturn hardware.
  • Contributed level design and engineering to Mr. Bones.

Skills: Game Engine Architecture, 3D Graphics, Animation Systems, Video Compression, Performance Optimization, C++, Assembly, Sega Saturn

Lead Engineer

Pacific Softscape · Aug 1993 – Mar 1995

Engineered the BIOS and development tools for Sega Channel, a pioneering service that delivered Sega Genesis games over cable television networks. Worked directly with console hardware and custom silicon to make broadband game distribution possible.

  • Received two patents for innovations in broadband game delivery.
  • Developed the BIOS for the Sega Channel hardware adapter.
  • Built development tools supporting the Sega Channel platform.
  • Designed and implemented low-level BIOS software for the Sega Genesis Sega Channel adapter.
  • Developed specialized tools for Sega Channel content development.
  • Worked with assembly, C++, and custom ASIC hardware to support the platform.

Skills: Firmware Engineering, Systems Architecture, Assembly, Embedded Systems, Hardware Integration, ASIC, Developer Tooling, Patented Innovation

Lead Engineer

Ringler Studios · Jul 1992 – Aug 1993

Just one month into my first engineering job, I was tasked with recreating ClayFighter for Sega Genesis using only the Super Nintendo version and original art assets. I also developed custom 3D engines for Atari Jaguar sports titles, working directly with console hardware in C++ and assembly.

  • Took ownership of the Sega Genesis port of ClayFighter just one month into my engineering career.
  • Designed and built custom 3D technology for Atari Jaguar sports games, including Brett Hull Hockey and Charles Barkley Basketball.
  • Contributed to ESPN Football for Sega Genesis.
  • Recreated ClayFighter for Sega Genesis from the original SNES game and artwork, adapting gameplay, graphics, and systems to different hardware constraints.
  • Architected custom 3D rendering technology for Atari Jaguar sports games.
  • Engineered console systems using C++ and assembly, working directly with hardware limitations.

Skills: Game Engine Architecture, Low-Level Systems Engineering, 3D Rendering, Assembly, C++, Atari Jaguar, Sega Genesis, Performance Optimization