Insomniac

I recently began working at Insomniac Games as the Core Director, in charge of the studio’s engine and tools teams. I’m still getting started, but I’m excited to work with this talented group on a set of diverse, cutting-edge titles, from console games like Marvel’s Spider‑Man and Ratchet & Clank to VR games like Stormland.

Also, we are hiring programmers—if you’re interested in coming to work with us, please let me know!

Harmonix CTO

I had the opportunity to hold the CTO position at Harmonix Music Systems from 2015 until my departure in 2018. I focused on a few main goals over that time:

• I directed (and contributed to) the ongoing development of our internal engine and audio technology, prioritizing the reduction of technical debt, expansion of content development tools, and the intelligent use of third-party tools and open source projects.

• I made a number of process and technology changes to enable efficient and effective development, with a particular focus on developing simultaneous projects on multiple platforms. In the last ~3 years I was there, we shipped 9 titles on 7 platforms, with a team of less than 30 engineers.

• I advised and aided project lead programmers through planning and development of their titles. This included mentorship of engineers who were new to the role. I also did substantial recruitment and team development work.

I’ve been a mentor in the Techstars Music startup accelerator program since its first class in 2017. It’s been a great opportunity to work with some exciting young companies that have interesting technical ideas in the music space.

Special Projects

I was the programmer on the initial DropMix team before Harmonix’s partnership with Hasbro. We spent just under a year developing prototypes of our music-mixing card game to flesh out the concept and make a compelling publisher pitch for the technology.

Around 2013 I began porting Harmonix’s engine and toolchain to iOS and OS X in my free time, learning much about engine development and low-level programming in the process. This included refactoring swaths of our platform layer, porting our DirectX 11 renderer and shader system to Metal, and getting our asset pipeline functioning on OS X. This process culminated at the 2015 Apple announcement event for the Apple TV, in which I demoed Beat Sports on Apple’s newly-announced hardware—a one-of-a-kind experience and a cap on a few of the most demanding months of my life.

Fantasia

From 2011 to 2014, I was the Lead Programmer on Fantasia: Music Evolved, a collaboration with Disney based on the classic film. Working with a company like Disney on such a historic property had its challenges, but we shipped a beautiful, ambitious product that gave the player more creative agency than any previous Harmonix game. The development team grew as large as ~90 by the time we finished. I had the opportinuty to give multiple presentations about our work on Fantasia at SIGGRAPH 2014.

Rock Band

Prior to working on Fantasia, I’d been in a lead role on the cancelled Rock Band Sessions. I worked on multiple Harmonix games on the UI and metagame teams, including Rock Band 3, The Beatles: Rock Band, and Rock Band 2. I also contributed code to Green Day: Rock Band and the Rock Band Network.

Education

Before starting full-time at Harmonix, I did my Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees at MIT, finishing my thesis with the UID Group at CSAIL. During school I interned at Harmonix, working a tiny bit on Guitar Hero, as well as at Google on the embeddable Calendar feature (which still works!).