Nick Lato Email & Phone Number

Chicago, Il, Us

Chicago, Illinois

Responsibilities:- Managing a team of 15+ people remotely across the US and UK and tracking feature development- Developing and building project roadmap, timelines, budgets, pitch decks, and business plans- Organizing team meetings, milestones, and generating tasks for each department - Prioritizing Tasks and establishing best practices to optimize development pipelines and procedures- Consistently communicating between all department heads, and appropriate stakeholders to ensure development is meeting quality bars and milestone deadlines- Creating game design documentation and driving game direction efforts- Communicating and working with third party contractors for outsourcing needs- Hosting weekly check-ins with team members for WIP updates

- Led and contributed to diverse test projects within a live service environment at Bungie, overseeing Annual and Seasonal feature content health on medium-to-large multi-discipline teams focusing on end-to end testing.- Ensured high-quality work delivery by comprehensive testing using proprietary test tools, TFS/Jira, and Confluence; actively participated in the identification of test efficiency opportunities, leading to a 50% reduction in reporting efforts and a 25% improvement in testing productivity.- Coordinated, managed, and delegated testing tasks utilizing agile frameworks and Kanban tools and techniques which improved the team’s testing efficacy by 15% allowing us more time to close our requests and effectively support multiple interconnected areas while acting as the primary testing support for other groups - Translated complex cross-discipline goals into cohesive test plans and strategies, emphasizing cost-effective alternatives to meet project objectives.- Collaborated with internal and external stakeholders, effectively communicating complex concepts through documentation in Confluence and tracking/reporting progress in TFS/Jira database towards goals, tasks, and KPIs.- Applied and taught test concepts, including risk assessment, cost/value trade-offs, prioritization, capacity vs velocity, user story basics, and value-driven processes within small teams to lower leveled testers; focused on mentorship to drive team and career growth.- Managed both full-time embedded testers and outsource/ExDev partners, ensuring alignment on testing objectives, feature specs, and proper access to necessary documentation.- Demonstrated adaptability within dynamic team environments, seamlessly transitioning between teams, establishing value, implementing structure, organizing frameworks, and standardizing processes to enhance team efficiency.

- Led and managed small to medium sized teams (5-12 people) responsible for hitting quality bars and KPIS for feature deliverables for each milestone- Utilized Jira, confluence, and Test Rail to track feature progress, kpi data, test results, development and testing tasks and other test metrics- Identified a rough 8 month production delay using data from Jira and Tableau- Developed test strategies, test plans, test cases, and curated documentation for feature coverage that allowed teams and stakeholders to understand QA’s approach, capacity, velocity, and testing needs- Full feature ownership and delivering high quality deliverables for the D4 campaign and 100+ side-quests from pre-production to shipping- Engaged with stakeholders and cross-disciplinary collaboration to ensure product alignment, quality goals, and test coverage - Mentored and grow associate and junior testers utilizing 1 on 1s, workshops, and coordinating development/engine walkthroughs with designers- Developed new QA processes that improved testing efficiency and reducing time spent manually reporting by 50%- Worked closely with our engineering partners to help develop and establish test automation needs to reduce manual testing efforts by 25%

Greater Chicago Area

Greater Chicago Area

- Responsible for creating test strategies and test cases for multiple projects- Evaluate test execution results.- Review other’s code to assure constancy and validate design and execution of solutions.- Perform on different operating systems like Windows and Linux- Prepare and implement software test plans, designs, objectives and cases.- Identify, evaluate and record questionable behavior, defects, inconsistencies and errors with application functionality, screens, output and content.- Perform with software development engineers for product design, walk through, code reviews and product life cycle inspections.- Investigate and report all problems regarding game functionality, hardware, OS- Collaborate with developers to prepare and present world-class casino game products with high quality.- Respond to all technical support inquiries pertinent to software application’s functions and operation.Shipped Games (5): - Double Easy Money (Mechanical)- Monopoly Prizm (Table)- Quick Bucks Triple Blazing Diamonds- Monopoly Railroad Baron/Scotty - Life of Luxury Jungle Cats

Hoffman Estates, Illinois

Responsibilities:· Accurately describe in detail, both in writing and verbal, a recipe to reproduce the bug.· Document issues in bug tracking software by entering detailed, but concise bugs into bug database.· Reproduce a bug with minimal steps involved .· Daily regression test of new builds, logging and regress bugs.· Develop and execute test-case scenarios.· Work with the development team to add new test cases.· Track progress toward and fulfillment of all certification requirements.· Test video game titles on various consoles and handhelds.· Verify functionality, data content, performance, usability/playability, and hardware/software compatibility.Shipped Titles:They Live to Destroy (Oculus VR)Dragon Front (Oculus VR)Unannounced Project (PC/Consoles)

Niles, Illinois

For 2 years I would assist with coaching of a team of 40+ students on the Notre Dame College Prep football team along with 5 other coaches at the freshmen level. I was responsible for leading and over seeing large groups of players for drill execution, play execution, 7-on-7 scrimmages, and team building activities. My primary responsibilities were working with Offense and RB's but also would help out with WRs and DBs. I would sometimes fill in and take over for other coaches who may have not been able to make it to practices. I would then be responsible for running parts of the practices. Lastly, I was responsible for conditioning and weight lifting for the Freshmen football team.

Northwestern University

-Led and managed groups of 10+ plus kids in learning/working environment-Responsible for teaching and instructing game courses for kids ages 11-18. Courses included game design with map editors and game programming in Unity using C#. -Created a positive and fun learning environment. -Showed students different methods of game design and how to approach things from a design perspective. -Assisted in coding: defining code elements, debugging projects, fixing errors, and showing alternative ways to code something- Overseeing, organizing, and managing group activities.Courses taught:-Game Programming For IOS and Android in Unity-FPS Game Design