Benjamin Merrick Email & Phone Number

Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom

Horsham, England, United Kingdom

Accountable for aligning and streamlining 7 critical technology teams responsible for the creation of simultaneously developed projects in the Total War franchise. Focused on evolving these teams and technologies with a product strategy to increase the future quality and speed of development for future Total War games.

Horsham, England, United Kingdom

Responsible for aligning a suite of internal cloud technologies that served, amongst others, CA’s customer account solution and the dynamic scaling of user services to meet demand, forming the studio’s cross-project liveplatform.▪ Researched the AWS platform technologies (EC2, VPC, S3 EBS, DynamoDB, RDS and others) used in the products in order to better understand the existing solutions.▪ Studied the CA bespoke processes and software solutions and facilitated discussion on the future of the technology with the team.▪ Researched and evaluated the existing product vision, in order to improve product understanding within the company.

Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Responsible for the direction and vision for Ubisoft’s shared vehicle middleware technology, securing and growing the product and the team to deliver value into Ubisoft’s open world AAA titles.▪ Planned and coordinated the strategic decision to consolidate the technology into a wider suite of Ubisoft Technology tools, and the changes required to align the team with the Technology Group team run from Montreal, Canada.▪ Responsible for performance, tracking, roadmapping and budgeting of the team and product in order to deliver essential functionality to simultaneous internal Ubisoft projects.▪ Oversaw the product move to a CI/CD strategy that enabled regular software releases into the Ubisoftcommunity quickly and efficiently whilst minimising risk to the AAA games in production, and improved our cycle time metrics.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Due to a focus change at the studio the vehicle team was disbanded in 2018. I stepped into the role of Producer on the Starlink: Battle for Atlas, Crimson Moon DLC collaboration with Ubisoft Toronto. The DLC was 3 months into production, over-scoped and with tight deadlines to delivery.▪ Quickly integrated into the project team, the vision for the project and the needs of the collaboration.▪ Analysed the team’s scope vs capacity for the existing agreed deliverables. Identified the team was already over scoped, negotiated a reduction in scope with the lead studio and key stakeholders that would allow the team to deliver on time and to expected quality.▪ Following the successful delivery of the Starlink DLC I was asked to reform the Vehicle Middleware team with fewer resources (initially 7 developers) and an appropriately focused mandate.▪ Spearheaded the creation of a new Vehicle Middleware Team, taking responsibility for crafting a new project vision, defining and agreeing strategy, roadmaps and milestones as well as responsibility for the project budget ensuring that Ubisoft’s AAA titles had the support they needed to de-risk their projects.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Oversaw the growth of the Vehicle Middleware Team, as our internal reputation increased and we continued to secured more internal clients. To ensure the continued quality of our output, I assumed a Creative Direction role responsible for project vision and creative collaboration with clients.▪ Responsible for defining and scoping the creative content collaboration for Watchdogs 2, Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Far Cry 5, Far Cry 6 and Watchdogs: Legion.▪ Vision holder for the Vehicle Team Creative Direction and strategic collaborations.▪ Oversaw the development and extension of the internal tools that enabled our ability to deliver.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Responsible for the instigation of a new shared technology team focusing on vehicle realisation in Ubisoft’s open world games. Built the team from 3 developers to over 60 at its peak, and successfully secured collaborations on the vehicle experiences ESPN: Sports Connection, Ghost Recon: Wildlands and Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate.▪ Spearheaded and owned the proposal to create a new technology team within Ubisoft, including vision, competitor analysis, scope and budget as well as continuing the studios vehicle gameplay reputation.▪ Championed an inclusive, friendly and focused team culture that put the talent and growth of the teammembers at its heart.▪ Responsible for key strategic decisions ensuring the middleware was game engine and physics engineagnostic, which went on to be pivotal to the middleware’s internal success.▪ Secured and delivered successful collaborations with Ubisoft Barcelona, Ubisoft Paris and Ubisoft Montreal.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Responsible for the management and recruitment of the studios engineering team. Oversaw the engineering team as Reflections moved from single project development (Driver: San Francisco) to multi-project development (Watch_Dogs, Just Dance 2012 and project prototyping).▪ Responsible for overseeing the studio's technical developers, and the engineering structure to facilitate productivity and retention.▪ Oversaw the studio-level cross-functional communication and collaboration between the studio development teams to ensure multiple projects could be successfully delivered in parallel.▪ Oversaw the collaborations with external teams and studios order to align with the Ubisoft engineering vision.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Led the cross-discipline Vehicle Development Team on Driver: San Francisco, overseeing delivery of the vehicle experience in the driving game Driver: San Francisco.▪ Responsible for managing and maintaining a highly creative team consisting of engineers, artists and designers to ensure the delivery of the critically acclaimed Driver: San Francisco vehicle experience.▪ Led the planning and delivery of high quality vehicle technologies to tight timeframes and delivery dates.▪ Technologies developed under my leadership included an all-new vehicle handling simulation, vehicle damage simulation, all-new in-car experience, articulated vehicle simulation and the development of over 150 unique and balanced vehicle behaviours for licensed cars all of which were essential to the vision of the game.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Maintained and expanded Reflections’ class-leading vehicle handling and vehicle damage simulation, as well as the design and implementation of the tools necessary to aid development of the data assets.▪ Responsible for maintaining essential technologies that delivered the characteristic Reflections vehicle feel.▪ Implemented R&D initiatives necessary to push the performance and capability of the vehicle technology.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Responsible for the updating the geometry toolchain and data pipeline that allowed artwork and configuration data to be converted into runtime assets.▪ Oversaw 25+ interlinked tools to enable the creation of game assets in efficient timeframes.▪ Joined the Driv3r team 6 months from release to ensure the project was able to meet agreed final deadlines.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Responsible for the updating the geometry toolchain and data pipeline that allowed artwork and configuration data to be converted into runtime assets.▪ Oversaw 25+ interlinked tools to enable the creation of game assets in efficient timeframes.▪ Joined the Driv3r team 6 months from release to ensure the project was able to meet agreed final deadlines.

Gateshead, England, United Kingdom

Team member on development of Street Racing Syndicate prototype. Brought in towards the end of the project to aid with scripting and debugging. Produced cross-platform code as part of a rapid prototyping team.

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom

Part of the 4-person programming team that developed Rocky from creation to completion. Responsibilities included the 5 training sub-games, a dynamic camera system, dynamic intelligent replay system, and the crowd animation system.

Bsc Hons, Computer Science

I studied a variety of technical, theoretical and management courses, comprising both management and technical specialisations. My.

4 A-Levels, 9 Gcses

A-Level: Computer Science, Maths, Physics, General Studies GCSE: 9 A-C including Maths, Science (Double award), Art and Design, English.