Jacopo V.

Work experience

• Lead AI EngineerFebruary 2022 - 20264 y.

  Leading AI engineering teams of up to 8 people size and line managing teams of up to 3 engineers, owning hiring, mentoring, performance management, roadmap definition, prioritization, and technical risk mitigation.

  Responsibilities:

  • Providing technical leadership for large-scale, online and real-time C++ systems across AAA titles (Battlefield 6, The Sims 4, Need for Speed), serving millions of players on PC and consoles.
  • Leading large-scale products development and high-performance AI systems within our Frostbite game engine for real-time decision-making of agents.
  • Collaborating closely with design and production to ensure alignment and integration of player-facing systems. Partnering with Research Scientists on ML initiatives (RL, GenAI, LLMs) to build scalable training and inference pipelines.
  • Drove stability and quality on Battlefield 6, achieving early zero-bug milestones.
  • Improved game quality and iteration speed by introducing novel AI/gameplay algorithms such as Bezier-based path smoothing and data-driven positional scoring.
  • Mentored engineers drive their professional growth, contributing to the successful promotion of one team member from Software Engineer II to Software Engineer III.
• Principal AI EngineerJanuary 2021 - February 20221 y.

  Led a team of 3 engineers focused on the development of the mobile game in Unreal Engine 5 and C++: Star Wars: Hunters, delivering scalable systems under tight CPU and memory constraints.

  Responsibilities:

  • Provided technical leadership and mentorship across internal teams and external contractors.
  • Owned sprint planning, technical scoping, architecture documentation, and performance tuning within an agile development environment.
  • Implemented multiplayer gameplay and AI features using Unreal Engine's native RPC and replication systems, ensuring deterministic behavior, low-latency responsiveness, and efficient bandwidth usage.
• Part-Time University Professor - Advanced C++ ProgrammingOctober 2020 - February 20221 y.

  Delivered advanced C++ programming education remotely for the MSc in Computer Games Development, focused on parallel programming, template metaprogramming, memory optimization and debugging applied to real-time simulations and high-performance systems in Game Development.

• Software Engineer III / AI Tech LeadSeptember 2019 - January 20211 y.

  Led an AI strike team and delivered a production-ready Recast-based dynamic pathfinding system within the Frostbite game engine, leading its development from prototype to production-ready, enabling scalable agent navigation in highly dynamic environments across multiple EA titles (such as Skate, Battlefield and other unannounced titles).

  Responsibilities:

  • Drove the tech roadmap, prioritization, and cross-team alignment while communicating progress and risks to stakeholders across business units.
  • Developed and optimized large-scale AI systems in C++/C#.NET (navigation, pathfinding, behaviors), meeting performance KPIs and resolving complex integration and cross-platform challenges for several EA titles.
  • Contributed to crowd rendering systems for Madden NFL 21 and NHL 22, working on the graphics pipeline in HLSL at the intersection of AI and rendering to support large-scale, real-time simulations.
• AI Software EngineerOctober 2017 - September 20192 y.

  Delivered AI and gameplay systems in large 3D online simulations for Star Wars: Battlefront II and Battlefield V, with a focus on real-time performance, stability, and scalability.

  Responsibilities:

  • Developed autonomous AI using behavior trees, FSMs, and navigation systems in modern C++, and improved game quality through AI-driven automated testing (auto-players) that detected hundreds of defects.
  • Accelerated development workflows by building development tools C#/.NET, including a Visual Studio code generator that radically reduced the number of mistakes engineers were doing when implementing new entities within our game engine.
  • Developed new game ideas, working closely with designers and using Unity/C#.
• Software EngineerDecember 2016 - October 201710 m.

  Developed cross-platform engine and gameplay systems for mobile and browser using C++, Objective-C, and JavaScript/Emscripten.

  Responsibilities:

  • Reduced Farm Heroes Saga memory usage by ~30% by optimizing JSON load/unload workflows, expanding device compatibility.
  • Improved runtime performance and reliability through low-level optimization and profiling.
• Software EngineerOctober 2014 - December 20162 y.

  Contributed to real-time and high-performance gameplay simulation logic and AI systems for the PC game Total War: Warhammer.

  Responsibilities:

  • Implemented C/C++ systems for FSMs, formations, navigation workflows, and complex agents' simulations (large agents, flying units) and built internal tools in Qt and Lua for data-driven development.
• Software Engineering InternJuly 2014 - October 20143 m.

  Contributed to multi-platform and client-server C++ systems in the domains of AI and physics for Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

  Responsibilities:

  • Implemented vehicles AI using behavior trees and extended/refactored engine APIs to improve gameplay integration. Executed profiling, debugging, and validation.
• Software EngineerDecember 2012 - October 201310 m.

  Developed Linux-based broadcast automation systems, including C++/Qt user interfaces and backend integrations.

  Responsibilities:

  • Developed database queries in MySQL and TSQL to enable workflow logic and data-driven automation.
  • Automated UI testing using Python-based frameworks to improve system reliability.