I’m Gavin Woods. A software engineer for 15 years

My career began in games development, where I co-founded a game studio with three others. During this time, we created several games, including small titles for iOS, and developed a range of native applications through contract work.

After a year of gathering experience of the industry we decided to disband and joined a small mobile applications startup developing facial recognition software as well as games and applications officially licensed by the FIGC.

After about a year, I successfully entered the gaming industry at an independent studio called Laughing Jackal. There, I gained valuable experience working with Sony hardware, including the PSP, PlayStation Vita, PS3, and PS4. We also ported several games to Steam. One of my proudest achievements was solely developing Flame Over, a roguelike firefighting game with procedurally generated levels. Players navigate through burning buildings, rescuing people along the way. Flame Over was one of the most technically challenging projects I worked on, but after weeks of optimization, we achieved a locked 30fps on the PS Vita. You can check out the game on Steam here.

As the studio shifted its focus to porting Japanese games to Steam, I realized this wasn’t the direction I wanted for my career. Around that time, I discovered a fintech startup in my area that was building its mobile app using the Unity game engine. This opportunity marked my transition into the fintech industry. Initially, I worked on their mobile app, but I soon moved to the middleware team as the company decided to bring that development in-house. Over the years, I became the team lead, overseeing integrations with other banks and the Faster Payments scheme.

After my time at Atom Bank, I decided to pursue contracting opportunities and founded my own company once again. This allowed me to explore various types of projects, including a year-long contract with HSBC. I also developed several visualization apps that utilized Kinect and other camera-based software for interactive user experiences. Some of this work can be viewed here.

I began contracting for Blockdaemon in 2019 and transitioned to a full-time role in 2020. Over the years, I’ve developed software utilized by some of the largest institutions in both Web2 and Web3. My work has involved building systems capable of handling up to 30,000 transactions per second with 99.9% uptime, often surpassing that guarantee. During my time at Blockdaemon, the company grew from 5 employees to over 300, becoming a prominent name in the crypto industry. I have developed software, led teams, and managed entire departments, gaining invaluable knowledge from my colleagues along the way.