Stephen D'Angelo Email & Phone Number

Huntsville, Alabama, Us

Driving innovative science and technology software projects that help protect America's soldiers and the country. Doing program management, project management, software architecture, and development in C++ and Unreal Engine.

Los Gatos, Ca, Us

Stepped down from the CEO role after a successful stint of building up the studio. Supported the new CEO as he settled into the job. Dug back into the game engine and did software development.

Los Gatos, Ca, Us

Overall responsibility for Cryptic Studios products, personnel, and business relationships.As CEO, I have had the pleasure of growing a fantastic and efficient team that builds and operates some of the longest running and most successful free-to-play MMORPGs. I ran a business built on highly tuned business models, solid personnel practices, and respect for our partners and customers.During this time, I worked to master free-to-play monetization, delved deep in legal work on contracts, invested in HR best practices, gained a deep understanding accounting and auditing practices, and taught classes internally on management and business practices. In other words, I took my engineering mindset and applied to to improving the business.

Los Gatos, Ca, Us

As Chief Technology Officer (CTO), had responsibility for all software work at Cryptic spanning Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, Champions Online, plus the custom MMO engine and new games in development. Also responsible for IT, operational support of the live online games, and digital security.As a C-level executive, developed financial and game analytics systems for the studio with a focus on F2P monetization. Gave management training to employees and worked to shape the Cryptic corporate culture to be one that is healthy and productive. Involved with almost every aspect of the business.In this technical role, also took on coding projects focused on strategic elements such as player generated content, scalability and reliability of the large scale game engine, and data logging and analysis.Filled in as Executive Producer for Star Trek Online from Aug 2011 to Feb 2012 and again Dec 2013 to Feb 2015. Also filled in as Executive Producer on Neverwinter for two stints. Had responsibility for game business planning, development, and overall leadership of these highly successful MMORPG titles. During my first stint as head of STO, managed the successful transition of the game from a subscription game to the free-to-play business model.Experience in day-to-day game operations of live games-as-a-service products and deep work in planning for design, production, and business practices on these games was immensely valuable in building my understanding of this market.

Los Gatos, Ca, Us

Joined the Cryptic team in June 2007, deciding to take a short term role as a team leader and individual contributor. Worked as a programmer on a wide variety of systems ranging from game play systems to performance optimization to localization to internal tools development. This work went into the core Cryptic Engine that became part of Champions Online, Star Trek Online, and Neverwinter.From January 2009 (at the beginning of production) until February 2010, had the role of Software Lead for Star Trek Online. Led the team of programmers in building out this game on the Cryptic Engine, while continuing to be an active programmer on the engine with a focus on game play systems, performance, and scalability of the systems.I used these three years to not only work on the game engine, but to learn the video game business from the ground level.Programming work was primarily in C and primarily on MS Windows.

Crystal Keep was a web site that provided resources on board, card, RPG, and computer games. This site was a well known repository for Magic: The Gathering and D&D 3.x game rules, recording millions of page views each month and high rankings in Google until it was allowed to go fallow in Oct 2008 and was taken offline in 2015.

Palo Alto, California, Us

After a long run in executive management, I decided to get my hands dirty again in a startup. It was satisfying to join this company in its infancy, with 12 employees and no income, and work to grow it into a stable business of over $15M/year income and nearly 100 employees.As Chief Architect, I led a team of 20 people in the development of a high-performance distributed, federated SQL query engine and supporting software. I contributed heavily to the design and to programming of the system, working primarily in the core of the distributed SQL engine and in the optimization thereof.I also interfaced heavily with our sales team, did internal training, and worked with customers.Coding was primarily in Java to support cross-platform work, but it also included C++. Development was done on MS Windows, Linux, AIX, HPUX, OS/2, and other operating systems, and involved all the major SQL databases, including Oracle, MS SQL Server, Sybase, and several others. Work was heavily threaded and involved complex transactional elements. I'm particularly happy with the top notch performance achieved using Java for such a project.Composite was later acquired by Cisco for its innovative technology.

Bellevue, Washington, Us

While still being dedicated to my day job, I worked nights and weekends on my passion in the game industry. I was lucky enough to get involved with Magic: The Gathering when it launch in Sept 1993 and unofficially worked on the game rules until Dec 1994 when Wizards hired me.Managed the official database of game rules for the Magic: The Gathering collectible card game (CCG) from near the birth of the game through the Eighth Edition. Worked as a customer contact for rules-related questions.Contributed heavily to the game design throughout the years, including the major reworking of the rules for Sixth Edition that standardized the game system. I have rulebook credit in many editions of the game as a result of these contributions and there are still many attributions in my name in the official rules database.

Darmstadt, Hessen, De

webMethods had a broad product line in the business integration software space. Products ranged from high performance distributed messaging systems to business-to-business (B2B) protocols to mainframe connectivity. The goal of the company was to connect everything to everything else and do all the transport and data communication required to make it happen.As Chief Architect & VP, I was responsible for the development of all these software components, spanning 250 engineers in 4 different parts of the country (Washington DC, Boston, Seattle, and San Jose). In addition, I had direct management over performance, scaling, security, and standards work done by the company. This includes scaling up to 64-way processors and globe-spanning networks involving hundreds of nodes, and work on key XML standards affecting security and B2B.I also spent a significant amount of time doing high level pre-sales and post-sales support, working with the CIO and top architects of Fortune 500 companies to work out how to best implement and support installation of webMethods products.This was the first long period in my career where I did little or no programming, and this is where my senior management and business skills matured.

Us

As one of the founding employees of Active Software, I enjoyed the start-up experience. Led the development of the Active Software products from the starting 9 person company up to a 200 person company and a $30M/year revenue stream.Active Software's primary product was a high-speed middleware messaging broker, that was used to move business information between databases (such as Oracle) and applications (such as SAP or Siebel). This space was often called "message oriented middleware" or "business event computing".I was a significant contributor as a programmer during this time, primarily working in APIs, protocols, and distributed algorithms. Programming was split between C++ and Java and took place on MS Windows, Solaris, Irix, AIX, HPUX, Linus, and other operating systems.Active Software was acquired by webMethods in Aug 2000.

Worked as a freelance playtester in the board and card game industry. Some products I playtested include:* Magic: The Gathering card game by Wizards of the Coast (all card sets from "Ice Age" through "Prophecy").* The NetRunner card game by Wizards of the Coast (both card sets).* The Vampire: The Masquerade card game by Wizards of the Coast ("Sabbat" card set).* The Shadowfist card game by Daedalus and then Z-Man games ("Flashpoint" and "Throne War"). I also contributed heavily to the game rules design of the Shadowfist game.

Palo Alto, Ca, Us

At Sun Microsystems, I worked in the CORBA technology team, looking for business applications for distributed objects. Developed a high-performance event-based messaging system for use in Sun's internal systems, with the intent to bring the product to market, but cut-backs at Sun killed the project. Active Software was then founded to accomplish the same thing.Programming was primarily in C++ and on Solaris. It was heavily threaded and involved distributed computing problems.At this time, object-oriented computing and distributed objects were the current rage. The rise of the browser and Java in 1996 turned attention elsewhere.

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us

Joined IBM to work in the multimedia products division. My work was primarily on a video-on-demand server product that won "best of show" at Comdex in 1993.Programming was in C++ on MS Windows 3.1 and AIX. It involved significant real-time networking and real-time OS components, as well as work with various audio/video codecs. I have a patent in streaming media processing from this work.This was the period of computing history when "multimedia" was the big buzzword.

ALH Group was a small start-up founded by a person who had done another very successful company in the grocery industry. This company aimed to provide real-time OLAP data analysis of grocery store data. At this time, stores had UPC scanners, but no ability to process the data, so it was shipped on tapes to other companies to do the processing. This product was aimed at getting the data analyzed as it was produced.Was the first programmer in the company and led the small team to build this product. Programming was primarily in an object-oriented language called Actor on MS Windows 3.0, but it also included work in C and work with Oracle.

Maintained UNIX systems for the EE department at Cal Poly. DECstation and Sun hardware.

C and 68000 assembly development of IEEE 802.1 high speed networks (100MB fiber) for a cutting edge product. Placed in charge of system message protocol implementation and debugging.