About Me

In my 20 years in the game industry, I’ve had the privilege of contributing to some great franchises such as Temple Run and Gears of War all the time working alongside some truly amazing people. It’s mind boggling to think that the products we worked on have been played by millions and millions of people. The Temple Run franchise alone has over a billion downloads.

For the last eight years, I’ve served as the sole DevOps/Build Engineer and Perforce Administrator at Imangi Studios. I owned everything from CI/CD pipelines and build farm infrastructure to developer support and source control administrator for a studio with distributed workforce. My colleagues call me the Perforce wizard because I’ve made sure that any issue they had was dealt with quickly as well as providing know-how through documentation, videos, and to make sure others can become wizards too.

Outside of work, I’m big into baseball as I have coached my kids’ team for several seasons, and I still play as an adult in a local men’s recreation league. I’m also a lifelong Magic the Gathering collector who’s recently got back into playing. Which goes without saying, I’m also a gamer as well. I enjoy making my own board, cards, and video games at home too.

Philosophy

Developer-First Engineer – My goal is to make every developer around me more impactful by eliminating friction and creating an environment where they can feel confident and engaged with their work. I also make it clear that no one has to suffer in silence. If someone is stuck, uncertain, or overwhelmed then I’m the person they can come to.

This is achieved by:

  • Being available and open for communication.
  • Following up.
  • Automating mundane tasks.
  • Writing tools and scripts to assist with their task.
  • Listening to feedback.
  • Collaborating with the dev on their workflows and processes.
  • Providing and writing documentation.
  • Creating short support videos. <- very effective
  • Never being rude or talking down to them.

“The spice must flow” – The goal is to ship and to ship on time. If you want to gain the most value from a product, you must keep development moving smoothly and predictably.

No one wants the emperor mad at them.

This is achieved by:

  • Identifying any potential future issues.
  • Promoting processes and workflows that’ll keep bigger issues at bay.
  • Determine any action items from a blocking issue.
  • Document major blockers and fixes.
  • Fixing items before they reach the developers.
  • Working with the developer who caused a blocker to prevent it from happening again.
  • Notifying others of the issue.

Work History

  • Lead DevOps Engineer | Imangi Studios, LLC | May 2018 – May 2026
  • Build Engineer | Boss Key Productions | Oct 2015 – Apr 2018
  • Associate QA Engineer / Automation Test Coordinator / Software Tester | Epic Games, Inc. | Sep 2006 – Sep 2015

Education

Favorite Games

Photo of Justin.