Since 2022 I’ve been based in LA, working with Riot Games in their R&D department on an unannounced title. All of my current work is under NDA, but as a Senior Manager I’ve been involved both in the management of individual contributors and managers, acted as both interviewer and hiring manager, and made individual contributor contributions myself to our project in engine.

In late February 2026, our project underwent a significant pivot and reduction in force.

Our project’s senior leadership chose a strategy that frequently redeployed members of the team onto different areas of the project as special resources. Acting as an IC working directly in Unreal Engine, from prototype through preproduction, I was asked to lead and deliver 3-month strikes against a number of targets, including but not limited to (all in concert with many other excellent individuals):

• Iterated on the core game mode, including player spawns and location of objectives and obstacles
• Iterated on the level design of our main map, experimenting with updates to drive new experiences in conjunction with updated combat goals
• Iterated on core game movement, move speed, stamina, and game feel
• Vastly expanded of the set of equippable items available to the player
• Revamped the healing system and medical items with the simultaneous objectives of making it easier to use as well as a deeper and more complex problem space for players to engage with
• Updated damage calculations and formulas as well as damage and armor values, and the production of automated spreadsheet tooling to facilitate easy future updates
• Collaborated with UX to design features to simplify and accelerate the complicated process of equipping a full set of gear
• Reconceptualized shops, their contents, and item pricing across the entirety of 40h of progression
• Updated the identity of core game factions and NPCs, including names, personalities, philosophical frameworks, and visual appearances
• Wrote lore-enhancing names and descriptions for hundreds of items
• Contributed flavorful quest dialogue to a handful of quests

In my simultaneous managerial responsibilities, I had a higher level strategic focus:

• I was frequently deployed to areas of the team that needed support with collaboration and communication, successfully building bridges between disparate segments of the team that had been struggling
• Managed both ICs and managers with IC reports themselves
• Took on some of the roles and responsibilities of interim Design Director after departure of our original Design Director, and was the sole design manager for the team of 8 reports for approximately 6 months at that point in time
• Collaborated with the Game Director to refine the vision for the game, and collaborated with the entire team to source team insights in service of this effort
• Led occasional design meetings, running exercises and discussions on specific work initiatives or the general craft of design
• Advocated on behalf of reports to senior leadership in favor of working practices that would empower team members to deliver their best work
• Collaborated with Central User Research on playtesting efforts in many ways, including building and refining lists of questions to understand both qual and quant sentiment from players, analyzing and proposing new initiatives to address feedback, being present both on site and remote to facilitate running playtests, engaging with the player community and raising visibility of player engagement to the wider team
• Engaged in performance management of employees across the spectrum of performance, from helping under performers improve to helping top performers get the support and recognition they deserve and set them up for future success
• Helped mentor two engineers through a successful transition into the tech design discipline
• Helped in the hiring of both designers as well as members of other disciplines, through running interviews on craft, values, and collaboration and communication
• Collaborated with senior leadership across Riot to refresh Riot’s design interview kits to a new standard
• Took many internal trainings on the craft of management and leadership, including Riot’s MANA Curriculum and Customer Centric Product Strategy trainings
• Immediately before the project pivot, the Design Director had tasked me with developing efforts and initiatives to turn around low org sentiment scores and improve trust and collaboration between ICs and team leadership

My work would not have been possible without the support of my many peers and reports, who each supported and contributed to all of the initiatives above.