Curriculum Vitae

Michael Joyce — Performance-focused software engineer with 12+ years in real-time systems, gameplay architecture, and production optimization.

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Email

mike.b.joyce@gmail.com

Phone

(514) 222-2102

Location

Montreal, Quebec

GitHub

@mikebjoyce

Professional Summary

Performance-focused software engineer with 12+ years of experience building real-time gameplay systems and runtime architectures in Unity and C#. Co-founder and Lead Gameplay Systems Developer at Pansimula, where I architect high-performance gameplay systems and lead technical optimization across shipped titles. Profiling-driven by practice: I measure before optimizing and know when optimization actually matters. Recently expanded into JavaScript backend and operational tooling through a suite of MIT-licensed plugins for the SquadJS framework, deployed on live 100-player competitive multiplayer servers. Proven educator with experience teaching C#, algorithms, and data structures in classroom settings.

Education

Bachelor of Arts — Philosophy

Concordia University, Montreal, QC

Completed 2025

Additional Coursework — Software Engineering & Computer Science

Concordia University, Montreal, QC

2012 – 2018

DEC — Liberal Arts

CEGEP, Quebec

September 2009 – May 2012

Core Specializations

  • • Real-time gameplay systems and runtime architecture
  • • Profiling-driven optimization and performance engineering
  • • Physics-heavy simulation systems
  • • Gameplay AI systems and pathfinding
  • • Runtime tooling and procedural systems
  • • Compute shader workflows (HLSL)
  • • Procedural and quasi-procedural gameplay systems
  • • Event-driven tooling and operational systems
  • • Technical problem-solving under production constraints

Work Experience

Pansimula Indie Game Studio

Co-Founder | Lead Gameplay Systems Developer

March 2017 – Present

  • • Co-founded studio and led design and development of Galactic Thunderdome, a physics-based brawler released on Steam (October 23rd, 2024).
  • • Contracted and delivered 4 educational titles to Legends of Learning under royalty-based agreements, with later contracts negotiated to retain studio IP rights.
  • • Architected and implemented core gameplay/runtime systems under heavy real-time simulation constraints, including gravity systems, projectile systems, adhesion mechanics, environmental hazards, AI systems, and procedural interaction systems.
  • • Served as primary performance-focused developer across production, profiling and resolving runtime bottlenecks, GC spikes, memory issues, and frame-time instability.
  • • Optimized physics-heavy gameplay systems to sustain >60 FPS in extreme scenarios involving multiple players, AI entities, destructible terrain, and interacting environmental systems.
  • • Designed extensive pooling and staged initialization systems to prevent frame hitching and maintain stable runtime performance in simulation-heavy gameplay scenarios.
  • • Designed and implemented character systems including ragdolls, hybrid keyframe and procedural animation systems, gun handling, physics interaction, gravity transitions, and zero-gravity gameplay behaviors.
  • • Developed heuristic state-machine AI systems integrated with dynamic A* pathfinding operating on destructible and reconstructible environments with environmental hazard awareness.
  • • Implemented compute shader workflows to offload CPU bottlenecks in destructible terrain generation pipelines involving runtime Voronoi geometry processing.
  • • Built tooling and runtime systems improving iteration speed and usability for designers and content creators.
  • • Mentored junior developers through technical problem-solving, debugging, and systems implementation support.
  • • Assisted with Steam deployment workflows, production coordination, release preparation, post-launch bug diagnosis, and rapid hotfix deployment.
  • • Produced promotional video content and advertisements for Galactic Thunderdome using Adobe Premiere and Illustrator.
  • • Designed and implemented gameplay audio systems and original sound assets using Adobe Audition, including dynamic spatial audio approximation systems for large-scale entity groups and environmental effects.
  • • Currently prototyping and iterating on smaller-scale gameplay concepts in preparation for the next production cycle.

ROAM

Freelance UI Developer

March 2025 – April 2025

ROAM is an AI-driven game creation platform enabling users to generate and customize games from natural language and image inputs.

  • • Built runtime UI components and layouts using Unity UI Toolkit for ROAM's AI-driven application platform.
  • • Developed a procedural UI generation system enabling AI-driven dynamic construction of interface panels at runtime, with configurable modular elements (range sliders, input fields, image blocks, labels) designed for programmatic assembly.
  • • Developed lightweight animation systems for in-app Unity UI panels.

Institut Supérieur d'Informatique

Course Instructor

May 2020 – February 2022

  • • Designed and taught courses in C# and Algorithms in both classroom and remote learning environments.
  • • Created all course materials including lectures, assignments, and examinations.
  • • Delivered remote instruction through Microsoft Teams during the COVID-19 pandemic while maintaining strong student engagement and outcomes.

Institut Supérieur d'Informatique

Freelance Technical Document Translator

February 2018 – October 2019

  • • Translated technical course materials from French to English across a wide range of subjects.
  • • Ensured accuracy, clarity, and terminological consistency in all translated material.

Skills

Programming Languages

C# (12+ years), JavaScript, HLSL / Compute Shaders, SQL (SQLite — schema design, WAL, concurrency patterns)

Software Development

Real-time systems architecture, Profiling-driven optimization and debugging, Runtime and memory-conscious engineering, Algorithmic complexity and data structures, Object pooling and staged initialization systems, Physics optimization for gameplay systems, Gameplay AI and pathfinding systems, Event-driven architecture, Database-backed state management and persistence, Open-source development (MIT-licensed public repositories)

Game Development

Unity (12+ years), Unity Profiler (CPU, GPU, memory, physics), Unity UI Toolkit, Gameplay systems engineering, Simulation-heavy gameplay architecture, Procedural and quasi-procedural systems, AI behavior systems, Runtime UI generation, Technical prototyping and iteration workflows

AI-Assisted Development

Cline (VSCode) as primary AI-assisted development workflow, Hands-on evaluation of Claude and Gemini across real engineering tasks, Model selection and cost-utility optimization based on task complexity and workflow efficiency, Strong traditional programming background established prior to AI-assisted development workflows

Tools & Technologies

Git / GitHub, Visual Studio / VSCode, Node.js / Yarn, SQLite, Discord API, Jira, Adobe Audition, Adobe Premiere, Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Teams

Languages

English — fluent (spoken and written), French — fluent (spoken), basic (written)

Additional Strengths

Technical mentoring and instruction, Cross-disciplinary collaboration, Production problem-solving, Runtime debugging and issue diagnosis, Rapid prototyping balanced with production-focused optimization, Small-team technical leadership and coordination