Career History
Total Respawn – Lead Software Engineer and Technical Advisor Nov 2020 – Present
- Develop a multiplayer virtual reality game in Unity3D for a live arcade experience.
- Develop tools for the design team to test ideas and make gameplay changes.
- Advise the team on available third party tools and source control best practices.
Ghost Lab Games – Lead Software Engineer: Contract Jan 2021 – Present
- Integrate the work from the narrative, music, and animation teams to develop a single player game in Unity3D.
- Develop a tool for narrative to execute commands as part of character dialogue.
- Construct builds with controls for the music team to test pacing and implementation of their work.
Listen Inc – Software Developer in Test Mar 2020 – Oct 2020
- Maintain and improve the Jenkins automated build system and Ansible playbooks to generate Jenkins agents.
- Develop tools to create statistical reports of software performance.
- Develop Python tools to automate hardware and software testing.
- Refactor and document legacy code written in Python and Groovy.
Demiurge Studios (SEGA Networks) – QA Tester Apr 2015 – Mar 2017
- Tested and documented bugs in JIRA for Marvel Puzzle Quest, Puzzle & Glory, and Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire on PC [Steam], iOS, and Android platforms.
- Collaborated with full stack engineers to determine the cause of complex bugs.
- Coordinated customer service and community management staff for the top grossing cross-platform Marvel Puzzle Quest.
- Communicated with users to document and test reported issues.
- Participated in the agile software development process, working with three different scrum teams.
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Start Something – Mechanical Engineering prototyping Aug 2012 – Apr 2015
- Managed and tracked deliverables in Microsoft Excel.
- Rapid Prototyping of potential projects to determine feasibility.
Education
University at Buffalo
- B.S. Computer Science: Completed Fall 2019.
- B.A. Economics: Completed Spring 2009.
Programming and Software
Languages: C#/C++, Python, Java, Javascript, SQL, Mips assembly.
General: Unity3D, JIRA bug tracking, Github, Perforce, OpenCV, Jenkins, Ansible, Docker, Mixpanel analytics, Linux, Audacity, Adobe Photoshop, Robot Operating System
Independent Portfolio
Data Processing and Collection – Contract: Design the data structure and presentation of user’s activity for an online learning platform.
Virtual Reality – Puzzle: “Escape the witch’s grotto” Potion mixing escape room.
Unity3D – Game: “Ok Heist” Putting a team together for a heist pulled from a Google doc.
Android app: Digital version of the card game “Egyptian Ratscrew” with local multiplayer and computer players on a single device.
Android app: “Drop the Mic” Initially meant to be a test of posting an app on the Google Play Store resulted in 600,000 downloads.
Writing/Editing: Freelance: Two science books for 10-12 year olds about ‘Weathering and Erosion’ and ‘Mixtures vs Solutions’.
Hack-a-Thons and Game Jams
VR/AR: Microsoft Hololens, Google Project Tango, Hack Reality Virtually 2016-19 and Intel’s Realsense.
Other: Attended Global Game Jam 2014-19, MIT Escape the Room, Purple Monkey game jam.
Dan Donato \ Dvdonato@gmail.com 