Nicole Legare Email & Phone Number

Irvine, California, Us

Chicago, Illinois, Us

Build high-quality mobile games using C# and the Unity game engine. Emphasis on live ops and building client code for data-driven games in order to allow designers to quickly make changes to the game without needing to wait for code changes. I've personally been heavily involved in establishing best practices for the engineering team, including instituting a regular code review process, adoption of test automation, increasing our usage of custom tools and automation, and building out processes for tracking and addressing technical debt. Took an active role in mentorship, helping to train new engineers and introduce existing engineers to general software development best practices. Worked with our product team to advocate for the value of building out high-quality technical foundations for our products, while balancing our technical needs with the needs of the business.

Duluth, Georgia, Us

Worked to break up a monolithic C# application into a distributed network of modular components. This includes replacing a number of in-house technologies with more stable, established 3rd party solutions. At the same time, I worked to introduce test and build automation in an effort to increase the efficiency of the development team and catch defects earlier in the development process. This has proved especially valuable in a regulated industry, where catching bugs before certification can save tens of thousands of dollars for each release.

Las Vegas, Nv, Us

At Scientific Games I was part of the development of the next generation of online social casinos. Our product bridged the gap between traditional land-based casinos and the social casinos you might play on Facebook or your mobile device.When I was hired, I was brought on because of my experience with Unity. The mobile application was built with Unity, but it quickly became clear that the existing application was burdened by technical debt, and that it would be difficult to clean it up piecemeal. I led an investigation into which technologies we should use to replace Unity, ultimately deciding to use the Ionic framework and build it as a hybrid mobile app. In doing so, I had to quickly learn web development technologies and app development techniques. It was a big shift for me, but it was worthwhile to be able to rapidly build a robust, cross-platform mobile app.In rebuilding the app, I had the opportunity to push for continuous integration and test automation for the project. Being able to build test automation in from the beginning proved valuable, as we were able to get extensive test coverage and a thorough regression test suite. Even in the early stages of developing the app we were already catching regressions by running the test suite on a regular basis.Beyond the technical work I was doing, I also took an active roll in shaping the team's development process. I worked with our Scrum master to create a collaborative process for working with designers and QA to ensure regular delivery of high quality software. I helped bridge the gap between developers and artists, leading to better collaboration between the two groups. I also worked with our product owner to prioritize work and ensure that we were always working to meet the high-level goals set for us by company. Establishing a solid development process helped us ensure that we were delivering value without sacrificing quality.

I worked on the early development of Project Highrise for SomaSim, working part time as a contractor while finishing my studies at DePaul University. I did gameplay and UI development in Unity, working primarily in C#. I helped build the systems for managing a large, robust game simulation, and implemented new user-facing feature. I also worked to create a user-friendly interface, including both traditional UI widgets and in-game visuals. In doing so, I created custom shaders and materials to achieve various visual effects for the game.

Chicago, Il, Us

I worked as an intern on NetherRealm's core technologies team for nine months during my Sophomore year at DePaul University, and for another three months during my Junior year. The internships gave me an early introduction to working in the games industry, as well as a deep understanding of the C++ programming language.The main part of my role at NetherRealm was supporting the core technologies team during the development of Mortal Kombat X and Injustice 2. I worked in their customized version of the Unreal Engine 3 codebase, performing various tasks including bug fixes and code cleanup. While most of it was grunt work, it gave me valuable experience navigating a massive codebase that had built up over decades. Learning to quickly orient myself in a new project is a skill that is still valuable years later.Working in NetherRealm's codebase gave me first-hand experience with how to work with C++ in a production environment. I became much more familiar with the C++ build process, the difficulties of cross-platform development, and the various pitfalls that are inherent to C++ development.I also had the opportunity to work on a few of the team's internal development tools. I worked on two internal sites built with Python and Django, one that displayed the results from the continuous integration builds, and one that tracked released versions of an internal tool for artists. Both of these projects gave me freedom to manage myself and work directly with the people who would be using the sites to determine how best to deliver value to them.