Lena Hartmann Senior Game Developer
Burbank, CA • gamedev@gmail.com • +1 818-555-0147
Profile Summary
- Senior Game Developer with 9 years of experience shipping AAA console and PC action-adventure games across combat, traversal, and open-world systems, specializing in gameplay programming, animation integration, and performance optimization on console.
- Solid technical background across engines (Unreal Engine 5, Unity 6), languages (C++, Blueprints), rendering on DirectX 12 and shader authoring in HLSL, target platforms PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, multiplayer on authoritative client-server with rollback, and live ops covering seasonal content drops, A/B tests, and telemetry-driven balance patches, with strong fundamentals in frame-budget discipline, data-oriented design, and a designer-friendly tools mindset.
- Deep expertise in gameplay systems and combat-state machines, ECS / component-based architecture and data-oriented design, shader authoring and post-processing in HLSL, and frame-pacing and memory budget on console, applying practices such as navmesh, behavior trees, and animation state machines and editor-tools authoring for designers to deliver ship-quality, perf-clean, and designer-friendly gameplay code.
- Engaged collaborator working cross-functionally with Design, Art, Animation, Audio, QA, and Production in milestone-paced production with weekly playtests, contributing to gameplay-design reviews, perf war rooms, and post-launch retrospectives with a pragmatic, ship-it-then-polish mindset.
- Senior engineer who shares technical excellence and fosters a culture of code-review rigor and playtest-driven iteration discipline through code-review coaching and tool-building, while running weekly gameplay-engineering guild sessions and authoring widely adopted gameplay-pattern and tools handbooks.
Technical Skills
- Engines & Languages:
- Unreal Engine 5 (C++ + Blueprints), Unity 6 (C#), Godot 4 (GDScript / C#), proprietary engines, GitHub, Perforce
- Gameplay & Systems:
- Combat state machines, traversal, weapon systems, ECS, component-based architecture, data-oriented design, gameplay tags
- Graphics & Rendering:
- HLSL / GLSL shaders, PBR materials, Lumen / Nanite, post-processing, DirectX 12, Vulkan, Metal, ray tracing fundamentals
- Physics, Animation & AI:
- Chaos / PhysX, animation state machines, IK, navmesh + A* pathfinding, behavior trees, finite state machines, blackboards
- Performance & Profiling:
- Unreal Insights, Unity Profiler, RenderDoc, PIX, RGP, frame-pacing, LOD authoring, draw-call batching, GPU memory budget
- Multiplayer & Networking:
- Replication, lag compensation, rollback netcode, dedicated-server hosting, matchmaking, anti-cheat fundamentals
- Tools & Pipeline:
- Editor extensions, Blueprint nodes, asset import pipelines, Houdini / Maya bridges, Python automation, build automation
- Platforms & Live Ops:
- PS5 + Xbox Series X|S + PC Steam, Switch (cross-vendor study), Steamworks, PSN, Xbox Live, telemetry pipelines, A/B testing
Education
DigiPen Institute of Technology
B.S. in Computer Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation
Work Experience
Insomniac Games
Senior Game Developer
- Own gameplay programming on Marvel's Wolverine for PS5, covering the traversal, melee combat, and gadget systems pillars from prototype through cert; partner with 14 gameplay engineers across 3 pods on combat tuning, animation hand-offs, and weekly playtest reviews with design and QA.
- Designed the gameplay systems around component-based ECS with gameplay-tag dispatch, scaling cleanly to 120+ gameplay components and 40 ability classes; cut designer iteration loops from 30s to 4s through hot-reload and data-driven authoring.
- Authored character shaders and the post-processing stack in HLSL with PBR materials and screen-space effects, profiling on RenderDoc and PIX; delivered 2.4 ms of GPU-time savings per frame on PS5 across the lighting and bloom passes.
- Built enemy behavior trees, navmesh A* pathing, and full-body IK for combat encounters, tuning blackboards and animation state machines against weekly design reviews; shipped 20+ enemy archetypes across 8 mission types in the campaign.
- Drove the perf pass to a locked 60 FPS on PS5 performance mode, pulling frame time from 19.4 ms to 16.2 ms through Unreal Insights traces, LOD authoring, and draw-call batching; cleared all 14 review-flagged scenes ahead of cert.
- Owned co-op replication and the lag compensation pass across dedicated servers, with rewind buffers and authority arbitration on the gameplay simulation; lifted hit-reg accuracy from 87% to 98% at 120 ms RTT across the launch window.
- Built editor extensions for the ability-authoring editor and the combat-tuning sliders, with Blueprint nodes and Python automation behind the import pipeline; adopted by 12 designers across 3 disciplines and cited in 2 postmortems as a top-3 production accelerator.
Riot Games
Game Developer
- Partnered with Design, Art, Animation, Audio, and Production across the live-service flow, contributing to 3 champions and 2 game modes shipped to live over 9 release cycles in the period.
- Owned telemetry events and the A/B test framework for the gameplay team, running 18+ live experiments with statistical-rigor reviews; lifted D7 retention by 6.2% on a flagship mode through tuned drop tables and pacing.
- Mentored 3 mid-career engineers through senior gameplay work, running pairing sessions on combat and animation systems; supported 2 promotions to Senior and authored the team's gameplay code-review handbook adopted across 4 squads.
- Partnered with Design, Art, Animation, Audio, QA, and Production across 14 patches and 4 seasonal events, authoring 22 release-readiness and live-ops runbooks that became the team's release baseline; onboarded 5 new gameplay engineers into the cadence.