Resume, Consulting & Training Services Larry Mellon is available for full-time work or consulting services and training for companies interested in scalable virtual world architectures or increasing their iteration rates via automated testing and metrics-driven development. He has published extensively in this field, and provided ground-breaking solutions for the EA games "The Sims Online" and "The Sims 2.0". Two page resume: Larry Mellon Resume (PDF) Contact: larry@maggotranch.com Career Overview: Over ten years in online game development; over ten years in simulation engines. Over seven years as a technology lead in prototyping and scaling startup software. Over five years as a technology lead on the business planning and pitching side as well. Leadership experience: Cross-team communication skills from years of working in engineering, quality assurance, business development and system integration allow seamless translation between customer requirements, technology options, and business implications. Ran small engineering teams in research labs, game production and quality assurance groups, using SCRUM, test-driven development, embedded metrics and other agile techniques. System architect in the DARPA Synthetic Theater Of War and Advanced Distributed Simulation projects that integrated multiple training simulations into shared virtual worlds for large-scale exercises. Ran the Game Developer Conference boot camp for building online games and taught Jade Simulations courses on parallel, object-oriented software. Over twenty conference lectures across two industries, covering test-driven and metrics-driven development, cluster computing, and scalable simulation interoperability design patterns; co-authored a textbook for building online games. Startup experience: First employee at Jade Simulations, wearing programmer and technology evangelist hats. We took an academic research project and turned it into a high quality, high performance parallel simulation engine. Co-founded Emergent Game Technologies, including all technical pitches to investors, and raised over ten million in VC funds. Designed the architecture and built the core engineering team. Joined KIXEYE to help scale their newly successful games via load testing, embedded metrics and mentoring the QE team. Complementary skills: C/C++ programmer in several university and national lab research projects, online game engines and commercial simulation engines for clustered computers and massively multi-threaded supercomputers. Broad experience outside of software via minoring in ancient history and modern dance, traveling around the world by competing in international sports (rugby, wrestling and ultimate frisbee), coaching, community leadership roles and hobbies (Tai Chi, garden design and writing). Work History Overview: I worked my way through school as a programmer for the distributed systems research group and by tutoring other students. We spun off the most promising technology into Jade Simulations. Jade was acquired by SAIC to spearhead their growth into simulation-based training. In 2001, my SAIC/DARPA research into scaling and integrating simulations provided a path into online games. I led simulation, metrics and automated testing teams in EA biggest franchise, The Sims. In 2005, I co-founded EGT, successfully funding and growing a platform for online games. In 2012, I joined KIXEYE to introduce load testing and metrics into all projects. My Objectives: I am looking for a leadership role in online games (production, quality or business), or another industry where I can use, advance and spread my knowledge of TDD, rapid prototyping and continual release products. Longer term, I am interested in education roles and coding rapid prototypes of story-driven games. My primary goal is a fulltime role on an eclectic team, and having a clear impact on the world around us. Contract work is a secondary but viable option, as it would let me continue my writing projects on how test-driven development can both help people prototype faster and take their prototypes directly, safely, into live services.