Crucible

Amazon Game Studios (Contracted)

I spent a year and a half working for Amazon Game Studios internally and externally through a contract with Experis Game Solutions.

Software Test Engineer

Amazon Game Studios (Contracted)

(January 2019 – August 2019)

As a Software Test Engineer inside the Amazon’s Seattle office, I’ve focused on providing leadership for several QA teams both within Amazon Game Studios and Twitch Prime as a contractor for Experis. I’ve help lead a small QA team through the early development processes for an cancelled game prototype, as well as act as a QA lead for two projects in latter development to oversee the QA pipeline. My specialty has been leading Embedded QA, both overseeing QA as they work alongside their respective teams as they aided in polishing compelling game prototypes and experiences, while also embedded myself in several different teams including artists, game designers, and live service engineers. Given my experience with Narrative Design, I’ve also played a key part in working alongside designers in an almost intern-like design role for the cancelled prototype as we developed our project’s Narrative and Quest Design. For more information, view [this page].

Projects:

  • Crucible

    • Time on Project: June 2019 –  August 2019

I led embedded QA inside art teams, overseeing their work and syncing with the designers to ensure that the project’s pipeline is on schedule. I did so while embedded myself inside Narrative, Localization, Audio, and Environmental Artists as I assist them on daily tasks and ensure that the polish of our project during beta development went smoothly.

  • Cancelled Game Project

    • Time on Project: April 2019 – June 2019

As the QA Lead for a small team in early prototyping, I consistently synced with our developers and tackled requests from them as they implemented new features for a project prototype. I did this while simultaneously building our QA structure and procedures for down the line once the project begins full production, and created tools for QA to use to speed up the process of testing during these early stages.

I’d also been given the opportunity to help game designers throughout the prototype process on top of my QA responsibilities, becoming a mentee and cooperating inside design meetings as I help flesh out the prototype through narrative and quest design.

I led two sub-teams within QA for The Grand Tour Game; a retail team that focuses on weekly episodic releases, and a team of embedded testers focusing on various areas of the game as we work alongside the developers. Utilizing Agile/Scrum project management, I participated in daily triage meetings alongside other QA leadership, and assisted with creating a test plan to structure the embedded team’s processes for the remainder of development. While doing so, I was also embedded myself inside the Track Design and Live Services developer teams and focus on assisting them on related design and back-end issues as they appear.

Test Associate III

Amazon Game Studios, 3rd Party Vendor

(March 2017-December 2018)

I’ve worked in for Amazon Games Studio as a remote vendor. As such, I focus on test planning and identifying core strategies that are used by the QA team and led the execution of QA tasks involving both local and remote parties. I’ve worked with new and experienced testers to create reliable on-boarding processes and assure the quality and accuracy of our work. I’ve also owned the gameplay and world components for an upcoming title and created a customer experience feedback report structure that is now being utilized across multiple Microsoft projects.

Projects:

Core Teams:

  • Cancelled Game Project

    • Time on Project: June 2018 – December 2018

As external QA for Amazon Game Studios, I became in charge of owning the World and Gameplay components for our project.  I built the test cases for what needed to be tested for these areas, and synced with my QA leads and designers of those areas to ensure that the state of these areas of the game were up to par with our pipeline. I also assisted in leadership responsibilities for my off-site team, creating and executing various QA test practices to ensure we were making efficient use of our time day-by-day, and constantly syncing with the on-site team to ensure we were all on the same page.

Outside of my direct project, I was also in charge of hosting a weekly office meeting to showcase our progress on respective projects week-to-week. I did this by making weekly PowerPoint presentations showcasing data, syncing with leads from every respective team to get a status update, and personally oversaw project databases to get a sense of tasks and bugs made each week to reference during the meeting.