Horsham, England, United Kingdom
I had a full time coding schedule, combined with my responsibilities as a lead. I set the technical goals for the team and manage our technical schedule and deliverables. I was personally responsible for the Graphics Engine Architecture/Design and I also developed the core DirectX11 Engine Implementation. I was also responsible the technical side of our partnerships with GPU vendors.
Individual contributor on the Graphics Team.
Developed a new DirectX12 Graphics Engine for Total War, with a modern architecture and all-new codebase with a multi-threaded Renderer Architecture that allowed us to plug in different Renderer Back-ends without changing any rendering pipeline code or game code. A DirectX12 Renderer was implemented with a multi-threaded command list recorder and support for Async Compute jobs. GPU Frame Debugging was carried out primarily with Renderdoc, Shader debugging with PIX, and CPU Profiling using the Sleepy Sampling Profiler. As a background personal project I also implemented a prototype DirectML implementation integrated into the engine in order to explore the use of Machine Learning.
After leaving Microsoft I took time off to re-train myself as a PC Graphics Developer. I Developed the PC video game ‘Wildlife Explorer – Birds of North America’, a PC/Windows simulation of Birding in the wild, aimed at Birders & casual sim gamers. The game can be downloaded from www.indigogames.com
Provided career growth mentoring, ongoing performance evaluation and rewards assessment/assignment for the 30 engineers reporting to me. Managed the technical development of Combat Flight Simulator, Flight Simulator & Train Simulator PC franchises, and the Crimson Skies Xbox Dev Team. Shipped: - Combat Flight Simulator 2. - Combat Flight Simulator 3. - Flight Simulator 2002. - Flight Simulator 2004. - Train Simulator 1 (3rd Party Game developed by Kuju). - Crimson Skies Xbox. Worked closely with Game Design, program management, test, and bizdev. Contributed to the ongoing business strategy, planning and associated headcount and financial planning. Evangelized a focus on formal project scheduling, project management and a renewed focus on application performance and scalability. Introduced a more formal build system and customized tool set. Participated in 3rd party due diligence evaluations for the Microsoft Games Studio. Worked on-site with third parties as-needed. Provided hands-on support and development as needed.
Managed the technical development team of 50 engineers responsible for delivering Microsoft core technologies for Windows Graphics & Gaming during the development of DirectX9. This included DirectX9 graphics, DirectInput, and DirectPlay technologies. Participant in the Microsoft Windows Management Leadership Team - recognized as an exemplary people manager, leader & mentor. Responsible for overall technical project planning, scheduling and staffing for the technical development team. Responsible for coordinating the development of Microsoft Graphics technologies with other partner groups inside and outside Microsoft, e.g. the Xbox team, and IHV’s. Responsible for employees’ career progression & rewards.
Lead Developer on the development of the Programmability/Extensibility (DHTML+Scripting+ActiveX hosting) aspects of Internet Explorer’s HTML rendering component, code name ‘Trident’, shipping IE4.0, through IE4.01, IE5.0 and IE5.01, plus a host of QFE releases in-between. I provided team leadership, architectural/design leadership and also contributed significant code for my area. Learnt how to develop and ship on ‘internet time’, with a strong emphasis in establishing a robust development cycle and development of a heavily automated build and QA/release process. Provided career mentoring for my 10-person team. Managed the IE4.01 Release Accessibility dev team, responsible for restoring key Accessibility features to the IE browser experience.