Vetted Unreal Engine Professionals

“Gameplay/cinematic animator with shipped AAA experience at Naughty Dog (The Last of Us Part II) and Retro Studios (Metroid Prime 4: Beyond), spanning in-game cinematics, player interactions, and mocap cleanup/polish in Maya. Also built locomotion and combat animation for an open-world multiplayer brawler at GameFam, partnering with engineering on hit/reaction prioritization and interruption rules to keep combat readable and coherent in real time.”

Mo Hallaba

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Executive Founder & Corporate Strategy leader specializing in AI data analytics and gaming

New York, United States18y exp

“Startup CEO/founder (9 years) who built an AI data assistant and ran cross-functional GTM + engineering prioritization using OKRs and KPI-driven sales experimentation. Previously worked in finance on M&A due diligence for multi-billion-dollar transactions, including hands-on NDA/confidentiality work; seeks roles at $250k+ depending on equity and fit.”

Dony Permedi

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Animation Director specializing in character performance and real-time previs

20y exp

“Gameplay/cinematic animator and animation supervisor with 20+ years in CG across games, film/TV, VR/AR, commercials, and apps, including primary animation ownership on Louis Vuitton’s "Louis the Game" (Maya-to-Unreal). Strong real-time pipeline and mocap cleanup/export expertise (FBX), known for diagnosing issues like gimbal lock and coordinating with rigging/pipeline/Unreal teams; recently supervised an unreleased 8-minute Unreal-rendered cinematic trailer.”

Jason Shankel

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Executive Software Engineer/CTO specializing in real-time 3D, game engines, and BIM platforms

San Francisco, CA28y exp

“Game/interactive systems engineer with shipped Unity/C# work (including performance gains on iOS) and experience building creator-facing tooling like a plain-language level scripting system. Also implemented an OpenAI-powered UGC dialogue/event generation pipeline with offline fallback, and built multiplayer collaborative editing in Unreal for an architectural drafting product using checksum + delta synchronization.”

“Gameplay engineer with hands-on experience across Unreal Engine 5 and Unity, owning systems from level streaming/teleportation to motion-matched character movement. Has shipped/implemented multiplayer features including GAS-based replication with prediction/reconciliation and a deterministic lockstep runner using fixed-point math. Strong at diagnosing hard-to-repro physics issues and balancing performance/feel (e.g., mobile voxel A* pathfinding at 60 FPS, Chaos destruction tuned to avoid trapping players).”

“World of Warcraft quest designer who owned end-to-end quest pipelines and shipped standout content, including the memorable escort/stealth quest “Klaskin’s Great Escape” tuned through playtests and a Dragonflight capstone framing story that drove higher side-quest engagement. Experienced in Lua scripting, reward/economy balancing, and building daily/weekly endgame loops (Beetle Ranch/Rak-Ush), with recent UE5 Avalanche node-based VFX prototyping exposure.”

Erik Wilkinson

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Senior Game Designer specializing in systems, combat, and live-ops game modes

Allen, TX19y exp

“Game designer with shipped experience on Squid Game Unleashed (mobile) and Radical Heights (battle royale), owning multiple modes end-to-end from paper design and greybox through tuning, QA, and live ops/backend rollout. Demonstrates strong Unreal/Blueprint prototyping, pacing-focused iteration (targeting 70–90s rounds), and building meta challenge systems that stay fresh via monthly/seasonal rotations and player-feedback-driven map weighting.”

“Product-focused full-stack engineer building a GenAI-powered case summarization workflow for a telemetry dashboard, spanning React/TypeScript UI (confidence indicators, reasoning traces) and Python/FastAPI backend with caching to control LLM latency/cost. Has operated services on AWS (ECS Fargate, RDS Postgres, S3) and Kubernetes, and has hands-on experience resolving real production latency incidents through query/index optimization and caching.”

Jason Salas

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Senior QA Engineer specializing in game quality ownership, automation, and analytics

Los Angeles, California9y exp

“QA/engineering background spanning Riot Games (VALORANT leaderboard systems) and early-stage startups. Has hands-on experience improving performance and reliability via caching, rate limiting, deduplication/idempotency, and shipping/validating high-stakes production hotfixes; also builds Next.js/TypeScript projects and automation/internal tools (Python).”

colton childrey

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Senior QA Leader specializing in AAA games, XR platforms, and backend systems

Los Angeles, CA7y exp

“Game/interactive software QA professional with experience spanning AAA titles (Activision Black Ops 3; Halo 4/Forge) and VR at Meta (The World Beyond). Notable for modernizing QA operations at Lego BrickLink Studio by implementing Testmo and dramatically increasing test coverage and user satisfaction, plus quickly diagnosing and unblocking a critical public-launch issue caused by misconfigured gatekeeper flags.”

“Unity VR/MR developer with multiple shipped Meta Quest projects, including a multi-user mixed-reality co-creation experience featuring real-time connection logic and shader-driven mesh generation for performance. Also builds AI-powered interactive applications, recently creating a video interview simulator using OpenAI API, HeyGen real-time avatars, and AWS audio/agent tooling while managing end-to-end latency challenges.”

“Live-service sports game economy/progression designer focused on Madden Ultimate Team player rewards. Owns OVR/power escalation planning, ability unlock cadence, and cost tuning, using Tableau telemetry plus MUT.GG sentiment/market pricing to iterate on metas and engagement. Drove year-over-year program lift by introducing temporary chemistry boosts, improved reward/progression structures, and a fan-vote program mechanic.”

“Built an emergency drone-pilot dispatch platform for fire departments, law enforcement, and FEMA, owning it end-to-end from product concept through iOS app, backend dispatch logic, and ongoing iteration. Particularly strong in designing mission-critical, regulation-aware workflows that combine FAA/LAANC compliance, geolocation, flight planning, and even autonomy/computer-vision systems into a reliable operational product.”

Chris Ferrario

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Principal Gameplay/AI Programmer specializing in game AI and gameplay systems

London/Zurich18y exp

“Gameplay/AI engineer with end-to-end ownership of racing-sim AI (fair physics parity, competitive overtaking) and strong iteration tooling (live tuning + config). Has shipped networked VR multiplayer work at Ready At Dawn, including a consensus-style goal validation approach to reconcile non-deterministic replication/smoothing discrepancies, plus experience with Havok/Bullet, spline math (Catmull-Rom), and complex creature/boss animation behaviors.”

William Freeling

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Principal Software Engineer specializing in game engines, simulation, and cross-platform systems

Shattuck, OK40y exp

“Principal-level Unity engineer who has led cross-platform social and multiplayer feature development for Epic Games, including Unity native plugin work spanning PC, mobile, and major consoles. Also brings specialized VR/MR experience for government clients like the EPA and Homeland Security, with a strong track record in reusable architecture, platform integrations, and engineering team leadership.”

“Game engineering leader/player-coach who recently shipped Netflix/Boss Fight’s mobile hit Squid Games Unleashed, owning live ops scheduling (XML/JSON to C# in Unity) and storefront integrations while reviewing 6–8 engineers’ code. Experienced in client-server reliability work (The Sims 4 time-sync incident) and in speeding delivery via process redesign (gated approvals), with a coaching style informed by 6 years teaching improv theater.”