Matt Kimmel

Current

• Software Alchemist at The Electric Sheep Company

Past

• Software Engineer at Kiva Systems, Inc.
• Engineering Director at Blue Fang Games, LLC
• Programming Department Director at Cyberlore Studios, Inc.

• Contract Programmer/Architect at GameTable Online, Inc.
• Network Analyst, etc. at University of Massachusetts
• Contract Programmer at Polaris Orchard Management

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Recommended

6 people have recommended Matt

Connections

187 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Matt Kimmel’s Experience

• Software Alchemist

  The Electric Sheep Company

  (Privately Held; Internet industry)

  June 2007 — Present (2 years 2 months)

  Co-architect and a primary developer on Electric Sheep's "Aspen" technology--a proprietary, highly scalable virtual-world back-end. Lead developer on the Ridemakerz Virtual Experience, a mid-sized virtual world project based on the Aspen technology.

• Software Engineer

  Kiva Systems, Inc.

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Warehousing industry)

  November 2006 — June 2007 (8 months)

  At Kiva, I worked on a Java-based real-time control system for swarms of industrial robots that performed various warehouse automation tasks. My primary responsibility was for mid-level motion control, including pathfinding and collision avoidance. I started by maintaining the existing code and implementing support for a new series of robots; I then went on to rewrite the lower levels of the code to support control of robots of arbitrary sizes on a single warehouse floor, as the original code was written for robots of a specific size. Additionally, I performed a great deal of refactoring and code cleanup on the motion control code as a whole.

• Engineering Director

  Blue Fang Games, LLC

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

  July 2003 — November 2006 (3 years 5 months)

  At Blue Fang, I was responsible for the Engineering Department as a whole. I set the vision for the department, staffed it, operated it from day to day, and made it more efficient. During my time at Blue Fang, I ensured that products were delivered on time and were of high Engineering quality and that the Engineering staff was not only top-notch but continuing to develop their skills. I also contributed code to several game projects. In addition, I was the driving force behind moving the entire company to Agile development methods for both project management and Engineering.

• Programming Department Director

  Cyberlore Studios, Inc.

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Games industry)

  1997 — 2003 (6 years)

  As an early employee of Cyberlore, I wore a number of hats there. I was hired as a programmer, and that was my primary role, working on a number of shipped games (and several unshipped games as well) on both PC and console. After a year, I was promoted to Programming Department Director, where I built a highly effective programming team capable of making the leap from 2D to 3D and from PC to console (while continuing my programming duties). I also served as MIS Manager, and built much of Cyberlore's infrastructure.

• Contract Programmer/Architect

  GameTable Online, Inc.

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Games industry)

  2000 — 2003 (3 years)

  I designed, architected and implemented a secure, three-tiered infrastructure for turn-based multiplayer games and game lobbies in Java, for the deployment of sophisticated web-delivered adaptations of popular board, card and dice games. I also implemented the game "Lord of the Fries" using this framework. See www.gametableonline.com.

• Network Analyst, etc.

  University of Massachusetts

  (Educational Institution; 5001-10,000 employees; Computer Networking industry)

  1992 — 1997 (5 years)

  I worked my way up through the University system, starting as a system administrator, spending time programming for a research project, and ending up, for the last two years, in the senior position of Network Analyst. Over my time at UMass, my duties included UNIX system administration, distributed UNIX systems programming using DCE, advanced network programming, project management, and administration of the campuswide TCP/IP data network and central servers.

• Contract Programmer

  Polaris Orchard Management

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

  1991 — 1992 (1 year)

  Authored and supported a custom database application designed to assist farmers and growers in integrated pest management.