Nikita Denisov

At Mundfish, I helped transition the studio into a more structured and efficient AAA production environment, supporting cross-team processes, scalable development, and long-term delivery goals. Key Responsibilities & Achievements: - DLC Production & Roadmap Delivery: Successfully shipped DLC 2 and initiated the development of DLC 3, establishing a structured pre-production process and onboarding a new PM under my supervision. - Team Structuring & Department Creation: Built two new departments from the ground up. Backend and UI/UX addressing long-standing studio gaps and unlocking new development capabilities. - Studio Transformation: Introduced scalable development practices, including formal documentation, code reviews, structured feature specs, and pipeline planning. Significantly improving team velocity and knowledge retention. - Cross-Department Alignment: Established clear workflows between design, art, engineering, and QA, enabling faster iteration and fewer production bottlenecks across core features and live content. - Live Ops & Future-Proofing: Laying the groundwork for future live service operations, including modular content updates, analytics integration, and long-term retention systems. - Strategic Planning: Actively involved in long-term roadmap definition, feature prioritization, and studio hiring strategy. Shaping the next phase of Mundfish’s product and team evolution

For almost five years, I played a key role in the development team behind Escape from Tarkov - one of the most ambitious and hardcore titles in the extraction shooter genre. Key Responsibilities & Achievements: - Backend Scalability: Optimized backend architecture to support millions of players, ensuring stability under peak loads and significantly improving the reliability of live services. - Feature Prioritization & Production Management: Led cross-functional collaboration (engineering, QA, analytics, PR), which resulted in a 70%+ reduction of the technical backlog and faster delivery of key updates. - Team Scaling: Scaled the development team to over twice its original size. Recruited and mentored new talent - many of whom advanced to senior and leadership roles within the studio. - Live Operations: Managed planning and execution of major updates, in-game events, Twitch tournaments, wipes, balance patches, and hotfixes - maintaining consistent uptime and live stability. - System & Meta Design: Contributed to progression system design, in-game economy development, and player interaction mechanics. - Tools & Pipelines: Integrated automation, streamlined internal workflows, and improved documentation, enhancing transparency and predictability across production cycles. This experience formed the foundation of my approach to building scalable, system-rich, and live-driven game products, where deep mechanics meet strong community engagement and operational excellence.