Mike Johnston Email & Phone Number

California, United States

Seattle, Wa, Us

I support product and engineering teams to improve the "Buy Again" experience, helping customers repurchase items they love faster and easier. This work boosts repeat purchases, increases customer satisfaction, and reduces service costs through intelligent, data-driven updates.

Seattle, Wa, Us

• Led a team of 10 game producers to deliver 80 unique game titles for Amazon Glow in 10 months, surpassing annual targets by 15% and increasing production velocity by 200% through a scalable development process.• Increased game releases by 300%, from 1 to 6 per month, by creating a three-phase quality review process and building a release roadmap that prioritized ready-to-ship games in order to surpass the company target of releasing 5 games per month.• Aligned 5 third-party development partners across APAC, EMEA, and the US to establish a consistent, high-quality delivery process, resulting in a 150% increase in output velocity per partner and significantly improving production predictability.• Led game production for original titles, ports, and exclusives in partnership with Disney, Marvel, National Geographic, PBS, and Mattel.

Menlo Park, Ca, Us

• Established the "In-Stream Rewards" initiative for game developers and creators, building strategic partnerships and overseeing product engineering to drive a 170% increase in pay-rate growth for developers and an 840% boost in creator follower counts, surpassing team goals for platform engagement and creator loyalty.• Led API and SDK development, guiding the rebuild and deployment of the Facebook Games SDK 2.0, including critical services APIs such as Facebook Login, Friend Finder, and Sharing, resulting in a 200% increase in partner adoption across multiple key regions.• Created the APAC-First Release Strategy, utilizing Asia's fast-paced market to rigorously test new technology and develop case studies, addressing North American hesitancy toward unproven innovations; reduced time to market by 200% and expanded global partnerships by 400% within a year and a half.• Supported games team entrance into Cloud Gaming Market 3 months faster through due diligence for a third-party tech acquisition, securing 4 top game developers to launch on the platform, and building a games services team to create SDKs and APIs for integration, all within 9 months.

Dallas, Texas, Us

• Led end-to-end development for “World Golf Tour” and “WGT Baseball” across Web, Mobile, and Social platforms, introducing agile methodologies that boosted productivity by 60%, resulting in greater milestone predictability and transparency for executive stakeholders.• Managed a 40-person development team across engineering, design, art, and quality assurance, improving feature delivery timelines by 20%, boosting team satisfaction by 32%, and raising quality through strategic hiring.• Partnered with the CEO to shape the strategic direction of the games portfolio by developing growth plans, implementing strategic hiring initiatives, and leading quarterly investor reviews to ensure goal alignment, ultimately contributing to the 2017 acquisition by TopGolf.

Redwood City, Ca, Us

• Led all systemic and gameplay engineering across 4 international teams to deliver an $80 million AAA game in just 9 months—a project originally scoped for 18 months. • Increased development velocity by 60% through agile implementation, improving team productivity by 40% and establishing more predictable project schedules within a AAA studio environment.• Developed an individual contributor performance tracking tool that accelerated daily decision-making, increasing feature completion rates by 28%.• Served as Launch Director, coordinating cross-functional alignment across 9 departments to achieve successful data center load balancing for multiplayer, meet all marketing milestones, secure legal approvals, and obtain first-party sign-offs, culminating in a successful AAA game launch across APAC, EMEA, and the US.• Contributed to AAA titles including “Battlefield 4,” “ Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel,” and “Battlefield: Hardline.”

• Managed a 30-person engineering team across two flagship game titles, making critical technical architecture decisions including optimizing backend database design, which improved game performance by 25% and enhanced scalability to support a 40% increase in concurrent players.• Implemented agile and Scrum-based processes along with an innovative “task countdown clock,” boosting team productivity by 65%, improving project predictability, and reducing production risk and costs.• Managed the Playground SDK supporting 4 million daily active users by optimizing technical infrastructure across AS3, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Postgres, and MongoDB (NoSQL), which improved system reliability by 30% and scaled capacity to handle 1 million additional users.• Oversaw a $2M budget for the Social Game division, setting roadmap priorities that increased revenue by 10% year-over-year, and provided monthly business reviews to executive leadership and the board, ensuring transparency and alignment with growth objectives.

Burbank, Ca, Us

• Acquired by Playdom along with my game “Reef Life” to establish Playdom's new San Francisco studio; expanded the game portfolio from 1 to 4 titles and grew the team from 25 to 100 people within 10 months, contributing to Playdom's acquisition by the Walt Disney Company for $762M in July 2010.• Led a 10-person engineering team by optimizing development practices and building a scalable AS3 game engine, with key features like isometric design, AI, and commerce systems, boosting production speed by 25% and operational efficiency by 80%.

As co-founder, I pushed digital content boundaries with "Sam's Interactive Reader," redefining children's books and social gaming. Partnering with Adobe, I launched the first successful software on Adobe Air, featured at the Max Developers Conference in Milan.I then created "Reef Life," a social game on Facebook that was acquired by Playdom within a month, and shortly after, sold "Sam's Interactive Reader" to UsTyme.