Zak Whaley Email & Phone Number

Seattle, Wa, Us

Seattle, Washington, Us

San Francisco, Ca, Us

Advise and create custom engineering solutions for various clients while developing and exploring additional projects including a custom engine, build infrastructure, and tools.Arkitek Scientific (Unreal 4, Oculus)• Developing an interactive VR experience for a quantum research lab for science communication• Created controls and systems for the experience in Unreal 4 including interactivity, event sequencing, state machines, VR dialogue engine, localization, etc.• Collaborated in design of project, guiding its technical capabilities to be more interactive Blockhouse Studios (Unreal 4, Unreal 5EA, Quest 2)• Developed projects for the VR visualization of projective light shows with complex surfaces and massive video textures for artistic development iterations and client approval• Created a flexible template in UE5 for this process to be easily applied to new locations and projects to reduce the creative development overhead

Plantation, Florida, Us

Perception Framework (C/C++, Linux / Lumin OS (AOSP))• As acting Manager, led a team of 7 to create frameworks, build systems, documentation, and educational materials to unite Magic Leap’s development efforts• Led team through a requirements milestone including device / PII security, platform stability, persistent coordinate frames, 6 DoF control fidelity, and calibration services• Cultivated a culture of open communication and proactive problem solving that empowered team • Helped resolve conflicts between team members and across teams through directed evaluation, compromise, and establishing understanding • Supported external facing API release cadence maintaining scheduled ABI and API compatibilityGoat_Labs / Unreleased Location Based Experience (C/C++, Unity, Unreal)• Prototyped multiplayer shared experiences and interactions for Location-Based Experience that combined and demonstrated the efforts of multiple teams• Developed an object system for synchronizing mesh primitives with Unity, a C# <-> C++ logging system, and integrated our debugging framework (GLDS D.E.R.P.) into Unreal

Plantation, Florida, Us

Perception Framework (C/C++, Linux / Lumin OS (AOSP))• Upon recognizing the need, formed team with original manager to meet the needs of the company to facilitate the collaborative development efforts of the rest of the company• Developed cross-platform IPC system for advertising / connecting to services• Built third party library binary system which expedited typical PC build process by ~90%• Assisted developing framework for algorithm developers to test features on PC in a runtime environment logically consistent with the device runtime for rapid prototyping• Established team as key resource for software excellence and platform knowledge across company, greatly reducing the frequency of critical • Simplified build system while incrementally migrating developers from the deprecated prototyping framework without downtime• Collaborated on cross-team efforts of exposing perception features to end-user developers• Produced training materials for a multi-repo rebase workflow for colleagues only familiar with a single-repo merge workflow when systems were migrated to Gerrit from GitHub

Redmond, Washington, Us

Project Spark (C++/C#, Win 8.1, Xbox One/360, Havok)• Empowered artists, animators, and designers to quickly add and iterate on content in the game through the creation and optimization of tools, pipelines, and standards• Designed and authored locomotion system for land, water, and air transitions robust enough for user-controlled parameters such as dynamic scale, velocity, and gravity • Built foundation for mesh and animation export pipeline• Architected animation engine, including blend pipeline, event handling, body type/head retargeting, facial animation, audio/FX/locomotion integration framework• Co-authored Hierarchical Finite State Machine controlling behavior flow for managing locomotion, attacks, and emotes with override overlays for weapons, attachments, etc.• Oversaw and polished development for Kinect character recording studio for user-animation capture used in custom emotes, including Full-Body IK for use in arbitrary rig retargeting, Kinect audio commands, animation recording/playback, and custom texture generation• Constructed initial “infinite” and continuous world terrain undo system• Developed the initial equipment and object attachment system

Redmond, Wa, Us

CS460/CS560: Advanced Animation & Modeling Techniques• Grading, tutoring, and lecturing for skinned animation, blending, speed-correct pathing, and Inverse KinematicsCS391: Code Analysis & Optimization• Grading and tutoring for crash handlers, memory debuggers, and profilers

Hanover, Maryland, Us

• Verified the stability of 3 independent projects to ship• Focused on writing thorough, clear bug documentation• Used technical background to aid in communication with developers

Busted! (C++, Win XP/Vista, OpenGL, OpenAL, SQLite, COLLADA)• Wrote core game tech, graphics engine, audio engine, and behavior system• Automated telemetry recording, analysis, and visualization• Created 3DS Max asset export and processing pipeline

B.S. In Real-Time Interactive Simulations, Graphics, Engine Frameworks, Tools

Digital Gaming, Animation & Graphics, Level Editing, Scripting, Web Programming