Matthew M.

Building a new first-party Windows application as part of the team behind iconic apps like Snipping Tool and Paint. Focused on creating the user experience to enhance productivity & creativity for millions of Windows users.

• Responsible for singleplayer career-mode & main menu experience for Turn 10’s upcoming project. • Delivered major gameplay features for monthly releases of Motorsport Live: including Spectate & Replay, cross-platform gameplay features & Social Hub, Advanced On-Track Ghosting, Challenge Hub, and Live Leaderboards. Owned feature design, implementation, and integration across Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam platforms. Authored complex technical design documents aligning engineering, UX, production, and design teams while resolving scalability and cross-platform compatibility challenges in high-load environments. • Executed a monolithic tech debt refactoring initiative involving thousands of files, eliminating outdated tests, removing legacy UI scenes, deleting obsolete gameplay features, and deprecated the Sketch2XAML pipeline. This effort optimized system performance, reduced maintenance overhead and improved build stability significantly. • In a lean team of two other high-performing engineers, completely replaced Forza Motorsport’s UI architecture to the XAML-based, NoesisGUI renderer. Developed the pattern for future UI development, resolved critical build and runtime errors across Xbox, Steam, and Playstation platforms, and integrated Rive, a real-time UI animation software. • Authored documentation and provided technical mentorship to other gameplay teams. Delivered internal talks on TDD architecture, driving best practices in scalable cross-platform feature development & automated testing.

• Shipped Forza Motorsport on time and at quality by delivering core gameplay and UI systems for the single-player career, multiplayer, and freeplay while maintaining full ownership of Rivals mode. Developed critical UI features such as the pre-race flow, pause menu, and post-race logic. Resolved high-priority bugs under release constraints and unified in-game features – ensuring a consistent player experience across all player touchpoints. • Led the Transitions Strike Team, a cross-discipline effort to address quality issues for ship such as hitches, screen flashes, and UI transition problems. • Took over pause menu development eight days before code complete and delivered a stable, unified solution integrated across all game modes. Refactored UI components and viewmodels for architectural consistency, aligned transitions with design requirements, and resolved cross-mode discrepancies. Led efforts to centralize logic for in-game menus post-launch, reducing redundant implementations and enabling maintainable extension for future gameplay systems. • Guided three interns through technical project delivery by defining architecture, providing implementation mentorship, and ensuring milestone alignment. Facilitated intern success through ongoing support, including one-on-one reviews, design feedback, and structured walkthroughs. Delivered long-term impact by shaping Rivals-based intern features such as Bounty Hunter, while maintaining performance and compatibility standards across multiplayer and solo game flows. • Initiated and led collaborative efforts to address systemic issues in gameplay engineering pipelines. Proposed and executed improvements to tuning systems, social matchmaking, and task stream automation. Raised & solved technical debt concerns such as the Performance Index and Rating system, which led to refactors across 250+ code locations, improving maintainability, developer clarity, and build verification test integrity.

• Directed a studio-wide Quality of Life initiative to improve tooling within the ForzaTech ecosystem, leading to a measurable increase in workflow efficiency for artists. Reduced light editor load time from 2.5 minutes to 2 seconds, improved search across 1,084+ presets, implemented viewport undo features, and launched an eyedropper tool. Spearheaded monthly feedback syncs to ensure cross-functional collaboration and alignment with evolving UX requirements. • Managed the integration of 749 cross-studio files from Playground Games into Turn 10’s core tech by executing a technically complex three-way merge across divergent pipelines. Refactored core modules to ensure cross-platform compatibility, runtime stability, and seamless alignment between distributed content systems. Maintained version integrity across shared branches while resolving compatibility constraints, directly improving toolchain efficiency and asset scalability. • Led development on multiple internal tools and UI/UX features within Fuel, Turn 10’s proprietary editor, including customizable color systems, search optimization, and asset visibility controls. Delivered user-facing enhancements that significantly improved artist productivity. Mentored four new engineers, conducted hands-on pair programming, and served as an informal task manager by assigning, tracking, and guiding Quality of Life improvements across the development lifecycle.

Summer 2020 - Software Engineer Intern at Turn 10 • Built a new asset browser tool for the Forza Motorsport game engine, collaborating with the Tools team to integrate the solution into existing pipelines. Developed scalable browsing logic and optimized UI responsiveness to accommodate large asset libraries. Enhanced artist productivity by automating asset retrieval operations and validating compatibility within the ForzaTech ecosystem through iterative testing across build environments and runtime scenarios. Summer 2019 - Software Engineer Intern in Cloud & AI • Engineered a data visualization application for the Commerce + Ecosystems org to deliver real-time financial incident insights to Microsoft’s executive leadership. Developed backend services to support dynamic data ingestion and used client-side scripting to present incidents through intuitive dashboards. Integrated identity and role-based access controls, enabling secure visibility. Deployed tool internally with support for incident categorization, filtering, and historical trend analysis across departments.

Shipped 6 production-level features for Smartsheet’s iOS application, including row and column locking, QR code support, and a redesigned attachments module. Developed Swift-based UI components, integrated a new dashboard widget, and improved accessibility compliance. Collaborated with design and backend teams to align user experience, performed regression testing across release branches, and resolved deployment issues in coordination with QA for final App Store submission.

Developed backend gameplay logic and AI systems for Triangul8, a mobile game deployed on iOS and Android platforms. Architected and implemented the in-game combat engine, optimized the user interface, and integrated campaign and multiplayer modes. Designed core AI opponent behavior with difficulty scaling and managed client-side asset loading. Participated in agile iterations with rapid deployment cycles and hands-on collaboration with the lead developer.

• Taught programming classes at several schools while attending school full time. Received formal training in classroom management and teaching. • Taught Introduction to Video Game Programming and Introduction to Java for 20 students per camp in grades 7-11th for three summers.