▸ PLAYER ONE

DEREK PETERSON

GAME DEVELOPMENT ENGINEER

Salt Lake City, UT
▸ View Experience🕹 Enter Arcade
15+Years shipping
5AAA game studios
80M+Fortnite MAU served
$1B+Franchise shipped
01CAREER LOG

Experience

Avalanche Software · WB Games

2026 – Present

Senior Software Engineer, Backend

  • Architected and built end-to-end player persistence for an Unreal Engine 5 online RPG.
  • Authored technical designs for backend game services.
SHIPPED
Unannounced UE5 RPG

Wildlight Entertainment

2024 – 2026

Staff Online Engineer

  • Architected and built cross-platform client-side C++ SDKs in Unreal Engine 5 — defining stable interfaces and Unreal plugins consumed by the full engineering team for Highguard.
  • Partnered with backend engineers to design and integrate end-to-end online platform services: authentication, session management, and live-service infrastructure.
  • Designed and shipped a comprehensive game hotfixing solution enabling rapid configuration updates across all target platforms.
SHIPPED
Highguard

Epic Games

2018 – 2023

Senior Gameplay Platform Engineer

  • Engineered and maintained the client-side online-service SDKs powering Fortnite across PC, PS4/PS5, Xbox, Switch, and iOS/Android — serving 80M+ monthly active users on a massive, globally distributed codebase.
  • Partnered with backend engineers to architect a runtime data-asset patching system for Fortnite and Unreal Engine 5, enabling live content updates at scale.
  • Built the dedicated server, matchmaking, telemetry, and multiplayer modes for SpyJinx.
  • Contributed to containerized backend game services and matchmaking in Java / Spring / Scala, and owned the Node.js AWS Lambdas powering the Creative Island XP calibration pipeline.
SHIPPED
Fortnite SpyJinx

Amazon Game Studios

2016 – 2018

Game Development Engineer II · Web Development Engineer II

  • Architected and co-built a deterministic networked ECS framework in C++ for Crucible on top of Lumberyard — client prediction, server rewind, and input correction supporting 8-player matches at 50 ticks/second with anti-cheat guarantees.
  • Designed efficient entity-query systems using bitmasking and spatial partitioning (octree) for performant runtime queries across networked game state.
  • Dogfooded the framework by building the first gameplay systems on it — shields, turrets, and combat pets — validating the architecture before rollout to ~15 gameplay engineers.
  • Onboarded the gameplay engineering team onto the ECS framework, establishing the patterns and interfaces they used to build Crucible's core networked gameplay.
  • Led architecture and technical design as team tech lead, building customer-facing and internal web services with Node.js, TypeScript, and AWS.
  • Spearheaded CI/CD adoption and built monitoring infrastructure — metrics, dashboards, and alarms — to maintain 99.9% service uptime.
SHIPPED
Crucible

i5 Services

2015 – 2016

Senior Web Developer

  • Designed and built a reusable Django + AngularJS application foundation as the sole developer — DRF API patterns, authentication scaffolding, a drag-and-drop customizable dashboard framework, and deployment configuration.
  • Dogfooded it by shipping a near-realtime reporting dashboard for police dispatchers: customizable dashlet layouts, citation and incident visualizations in D3, and geographic heat maps built on Leaflet with custom Mapbox Studio styles.

Disney Interactive

2012 – 2015

Gameplay Mechanics Engineer · Infrastructure Programming Intern

  • Built a wall-crawl traversal system for Spider-Man, Hulk, Venom, Groot, Drax, and Black Widow — custom edge/corner detection on arbitrary building geometry, hand IK, animation blending, and per-character movement variants.
  • Designed and shipped a real-time costume-swap system supporting 30+ costumes, hot-swapping skeletal meshes mid-action with animation state matching and VFX masking.
  • Implemented melee combo chains, ultimate attacks, and special abilities for 20+ playable characters spanning Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars.
  • Engineered drivable vehicle and mount systems — the AT-ST with weapons, Tauntaun, Bantha, and others — plus spline-based ledge traversal and a combat-cover prototype.
  • Maintained and extended all owned systems across Disney Infinity 1–3, a billion-dollar franchise shipping on console, PC, and mobile.
SHIPPED
Disney Infinity Disney Infinity 2.0 Disney Infinity 3.0

i5 Services

2010 – 2012

Web Developer

  • Built and maintained 7 enterprise web applications in PHP and Python / Django, including a purchase-order and invoice system that reduced client overspending.
  • Improved task-management efficiency by optimizing existing internal tools.
  • Collaborated with leadership on project design, client demos, and iterative feedback cycles.
02STATS

Loadout

Languages
C++C#JavaScalaTypeScriptJavaScriptPythonPHP
Engines & Cloud
Unreal Engine 5LumberyardAWSAWS LambdaNode.js
Frameworks
Django / DRFSpringAngularJSD3Leaflet
Online & Backend
Player persistenceDedicated serversMatchmakingAuth & sessionsLive-service infraData / asset patchingTelemetry
Gameplay Systems
Networked ECSClient prediction & server rewindSpatial partitioning (octree)Traversal & locomotionSkeletal / costume systemsVehicles & mounts
Practices
SDK & interface designTechnical leadershipCI / CDMetrics & alerting (99.9%)AI-assisted tooling
03MINI-GAMES

The Arcade

When I'm not shipping games at work, I build small ones for fun. This is where they'll live — playable right here in the browser.

Impress

A daily word game — build a bonus, spell the hidden word.

WordPuzzle
▸ Play

Wirespan

The daily power-line puzzle — route power from the plant to every house before you run out of towers.

LogicPuzzle
▸ Play

Cabinet #3

Reserved for the next idea that won't leave me alone.

WIP
Coming Soon
🕹 Enter the Arcade →