Derek Hernandez Email & Phone Number

Seattle, WA, US

Seattle, Washington, US

• Led Live Operations and Release Management efforts for New World, achieving a peak concurrency of over 900k simultaneous users and setting a Steam Top 5 Sales record in 2021 and 2023.Projects:
• New World: Aeternum- v1.0 (Pre-Release)
• New World– v2.3 Season 5: The Guardian– v2.2 Season 4: Eternal Frost– v2.1 Season 3: Rise of the Angry Earth (2nd Expansion, 1st Paid DLC)– v2.0 Season 2: Blood of the Sands– v1.9 Season 1: Fellowship & Fire– v1.8.

Seattle, Washington, US

• Projects:
• New World– v1.5 Arenas– v1.4 Heart of Madness– v1.3 Mutators– v1.2 Winter Convergence Festival– v1.1 Into the Void– v1.0 Launch

Novato, California, US

• Managed dependencies and milestones for NBA 2K21 and NBA 2K22, shipping across 9 languages and 8 platforms, contributing to over 20 million units in sales.
• Led the studio's UI department, overseeing scheduling, budgeting, and feature development, including a complete front-end visual overhaul.
• Directed cross-functional teams across Design, Art, and Engineering to align creative vision with technical execution and business needs.
• Streamlined communication and feedback between corporate, brand, and game teams, reducing revisions and accelerating decision-making.Projects:
• NBA 2K22 - Producer (UI & Presentation)
• NBA 2K21 - Producer (UI & Presentation)

Novato, California, US

• Led production planning from concept to execution, driving momentum for a newly licensed IP.
• First producer hired on the project; responsible for formulating the original production plan for taking the game from concept to pre-production and production thereafter.
• Collaborated with leadership to define project milestones and their schedule, adapting to evolving deadlines and technical challenges.
• Led the interview process for scaling up the team, resulting in 2 additional producer hires and most of the art team, including the Art Director.
• Served as Scrum Master for World Content and Gameplay Systems teams, guiding feature development for an open-world driving game with fully destructible environments.
• Optimized team workflows and processes, improving performance while fostering transparency, buy-in, and accountability across teams.Projects:

Bellevue, WA, US

• Managed development roadmaps for WildStar and an unannounced online action-adventure game, in cooperation with project leads and directors.
• Created and maintained project schedules with the purpose of tracking progress against data, forecasting completion dates, and avoiding resource contention.
• Scrum Master on independent teams responsible for exploration and development of player classes, enemy creatures, and gameplay spaces (maps).
• Drove the art outsourcing pipeline through means of organizing creative briefs, tracking task progress, and ensuring both deliveries and feedback between external and internal team members were continuous and.
• Collaborated across all levels of the studio to formulate, analyze, and optimize creation pipelines and processes that evolved with the needs of the project.
• Carried out daily tasks such as hosting meetings and sprint ceremonies, investigating blockers, and performing Jira/Confluence upkeep.

Bellevue, WA, US

• Responsible for the successful coordination and deployment of patches for all Western published titles, having personally overseen 58 unique releases for 6 products within the first 3 months of standing up a Release.
• Drove the Launch Readiness process leading up to the commercial release of MXM, Blade & Soul, and WildStar; ensured Development, Operations, and Publishing teams’ deliverables were on time and with impediments resolved.
• Championed continuous improvement across the organization, resulting in an increase in uptime, reliability, and a reduction in operational costs. Efforts resulted in achieving a 99% service uptime, an increase from.
• Oversaw the implementation of a Change Management pilot program, intended to improve service impact awareness across the company while also providing capabilities to support 3rd party security audits.

North Hollywood, CA, US

• Scrum Master for the Platform development team, delivering a mobile-based SDK to provide a uniformed set of community and account features.
• Led 3 development teams to ideate, build and launch mobile apps for large entertainment IPs, such as "Alicia Keys" and "AAA", on iOS and Android.
• Aligned development road-map against business needs; created P&L and delivery milestones and tracked daily progress, ensuring schedules were upheld.
• Converted studio to agile in order to support quicker feedback iterations, improve product direction maneuverability, and reduce development debt.
• Identified feature and technical requirements with multiple stakeholders and investigated how best to accomplish goals and maximize outcome while adhering to budget.
• Created QA pipeline and supervised resources to facilitate development needs.

London, Greater London, GB

• Product Owner for 3 externally developed games, representing publisher's interest and collaborating with leads on milestone feedback and feature priority.
• Scrum Master for the onsite Platform Development team, overhauling account management and ecommerce for our online PC and mobile titles.
• Maintained milestone delivery schedules and roadmaps, ensuring products, expansions, and updates released on-time and within quality expectations.
• Created executive reports on live product health and provided actionable recommendations based on real-time quantitative and qualitative data.
• Worked across all departments to coordinate resources and remove impediments as necessary.

SG

• Drove the product lifecycle for 2 MMORPGs and the underlying account platform.
• As the Producer Owner, set vision and goals for game community websites, the support website, and backend service toolsets.
• Utilized real-time data metrics along with CRM campaigns to enhance acquisition, retention, and monetization for the live game service.
• Key liaison for product portfolio direction and performance to other executives, external development studio heads, investors, and other corporate stakeholders.
• Collaborated with CEO and CFO on financial P&Ls, optimizing business direction based on current and forecasted product performance.

KR

• Responsible for regional operations and customer service of 2 MMORPGs.
• Provided actionable feedback on a prioritized feature development roadmap, resulting in increased revenue of approx. 300% for the company’s oldest game.
• Revamped customer support policies and championed for enhanced game security methods, drastically reducing toxicity and cheating.

• Handled escalated and high priority support issues and situations.
• Collaborated with production teams for the localization and creation of game text and lore.
• Trained and supported distributed customer service teams for in-game moderation.
• Supported the Community Manager on message boards for general moderation.

Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, DE

• Oversaw daily duties of the English Customer Service and Community teams.
• Managed a volunteer Guide Program, including the formation of a training curriculum and performing general administration and auditing.
• Authored regular live events and associated lore, aimed at improving subscriber retention and concurrency rates.