Overview
I'm a principal engineer and applications designer with over a decade of experience across film VFX, realtime graphics, and spatial computing. My work sits at the intersection of design intuition and deep systems engineering. I prototype new interaction paradigms in nascent spaces, design professional tools for creatives and developers, develop operating system components, and build the open standards and frameworks that power how 3D content is created and experienced across multiple industries.
With my feet planted on both sides of design and engineering, I bring deep insight and intuition to developing great experiences for both creators and engineers. I regularly take concepts from pitch to production, covering a range that spans interaction design, rapid prototyping, low-level rendering, platform architecture, creative pipeline workflows, open-standards leadership, ML systems for creative tools, web development, and hands-on 3D artistry.
I look for opportunities where I can solve difficult problems and make a meaningful, daily impact on users' lives.
Featured Work
- App Clip Codes. Co-invented a new interaction entry point at Apple. Designed the initial visuals, generation algorithm, and leadership demos for an alternative to QR codes, creating a friction-free pathway to drive user engagement.
- Apple Vision Pro Spatial UX. Designed and prototyped interaction paradigms, gesture flows, and spatial layouts for Apple Vision Pro from early bringup to launch. Built executive demos that shaped early platform direction, with many core concepts making it directly into the shipping product.
- Generative AI Workflows. Led the integration of machine learning technologies into creative pipelines to optimize artist workflows. Designed and proposed an industry-first open-standard system for tracking content authorship and provenance in 3D Generative AI pipelines, addressing emerging regulatory and safety needs.
- 3D as Media. Pitched, designed, and developed a cohesive strategy at Apple for making 3D content ubiquitous. Drove the adoption and unification of 3D presentation workflows across macOS and the web, while serving as a lead developer for core 3D infrastructure in the operating system.
- 3D Accessibility. Designed and shipped the industry's first accessibility patterns for spatial 3D content, establishing foundational user experience conventions for an emerging medium.
- Media Review Tools. Designed and prototyped a new full-stack architecture that eliminated director and artist friction, delivering a 100x performance improvement in shot review across all active feature film productions.
- Alliance for OpenUSD Leadership. Founding member and Technical Advisory Council chair. Led cross-industry design and standardization for the open data description framework now adopted across Apple, Pixar, NVIDIA, Adobe, and Autodesk.
- Particle Fields. Designed and shepherded the OpenUSD schema for Gaussian Splat representations, defining how the industry exchanges and interacts with this novel volumetric medium.
Experience
Principal Software Engineer, Vision Products Group, Apple
April 2026 - Present
- Serve as the product and design lead for 3D integration within the macOS Preview application, defining the user experience and interface direction for native 3D content interaction on the Mac.
- Architect and drive the unified adoption of 3D technologies across Apple platforms, bridging core graphics infrastructure with emerging mediums like Gaussian Splats and Generative AI.
- Designed and proposed an industry-first open-standard architecture to track content authorship and provenance in 3D Generative AI pipelines, proactively addressing emerging technical safety and regulatory needs.
- Continue to serve as the Technical Advisory Council chair for the Alliance for OpenUSD, leading cross-industry collaboration, specification design, and adoption strategies across major technology partners.
- Develop core operating system components, system frameworks, applications, and machine learning workflows for Apple’s spatial computing platforms.
Spatial Media Standards Engineering Manager, Vision Products Group, Apple
October 2023 - April 2026
- Managed a cross-functional team of engineers and designers to build Apple’s 3D applications and drive the spatial standards ecosystem (OpenUSD, MaterialX), standardizing how 3D content is authored and exchanged globally.
- Oversaw the architectural design and development of the OpenUSD Gaussian Splats schema and PMC mesh compression, defining how the industry exchanges and interacts with these advanced spatial representations.
- Served as Technical Advisory Council chair for the Alliance for OpenUSD, directing contributions to the Core Specification, Reference Implementation, and open-source ecosystems for Blender and Maya to ensure industry-wide interoperability.
- Designed and shipped the industry’s first accessibility patterns for spatial 3D environments, defining foundational user interface and interaction standards for inclusive computing.
- Architected an end-to-end ML data generation, processing, and result-guidance pipeline utilized to train advanced AI models on 3D spatial content.
- Led the integration of machine learning technologies into production pipelines, partnering directly with artists and engineers to transform emerging generative AI capabilities into intuitive, production-ready creative tools.
- Championed the adoption of AI-native engineering tools across the organization; designed and built custom ML-powered productivity utilities that optimized day-to-day development cycles for designers and engineers.
Principal Software Engineer, Vision Products Group, Apple
October 2022 - October 2023
- Co-invented App Clip Codes to drastically reduce user friction when connecting physical objects to instant digital experiences. Designed the visual language, developed the generation algorithm, and built the functional prototypes used for Apple executive leadership demonstrations.
- Designed the user interface and user experience frameworks for first-party visionOS applications, establishing early design patterns for the platform.
- Led workflow design for Reality Composer Pro, the spatial authoring tool for visionOS developers.
- Founding member of the Alliance for OpenUSD. Shepherded and co-developed cross-vendor design and engineering initiatives across Pixar USD, MaterialX, Blender, and Maya USD.
- Operated fluidly as both an interaction designer and systems engineer to build, iterate, and ship intuitive workflows tailored for digital artists and software developers.
- Awarded multiple core design and rendering patents for foundational innovations in AR/VR interaction paradigms.
Senior Software Engineer, Vision Products Group, Apple
February 2020 - October 2022
- Lead Engineer and designer for Reality Converter, creating a developer and artist utility that distills a highly complex, multi-step 3D format conversion workflow into a single, intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
- Architected core 3D asset pipeline workflows implemented across Apple, specializing in interface optimization and custom tool design for creative and engineering teams.
- Managed internal Apple content pipeline software and libraries dedicated to Universal Scene Description (USD) integration.
- Developed and contributed core code directly to Blender and Maya to improve open-source USD asset interchange across industry-standard digital content creation tools.
Lead Technical Artist, Vision Products Group, Apple
August 2018 - February 2020
- Designed and prototyped early interaction paradigms, gesture systems, and spatial layouts for Apple Vision Pro prior to its public reveal, translating abstract concepts into functional software used in executive leadership demonstrations.
- Owned the end-to-end user interface and interaction design for early visionOS application concepts, executing across spatial layout, gesture mechanics, asset modeling, lighting, shading, rigging, and animation.
- Developed rapid software prototypes, technical artwork, presentations, and video productions to clearly communicate novel spatial computing design ideas to Apple's executive team.
- Awarded multiple spatial computing and augmented reality patents covering novel interaction paradigms, custom rendering styles, and real-time simulation techniques.
- Designed and engineered complete augmented reality applications end-to-end using RealityKit with Swift, as well as Unity with C#.
- Developed and led specialized technical training sessions for digital artists and software engineers to bridge skills in spatial workflows and rapid prototyping techniques.
Pipeline and Layout Supervisor, Sony Pictures Imageworks
October 2016 - August 2018
- Designed the user interface and user experience for studio-wide production pipeline tools used daily by hundreds of digital artists, consistently earning top internal ratings for usability, speed, and reliability.
- Designed and engineered a new Shot Review and Approval Pipeline to maximize studio production throughput, shipping a new frontend and server architecture that delivered a 100x performance improvement.
- Designed and prototyped an advanced Virtual Production system incorporating tracked hardware virtual cameras, a motion capture stage, and an interactive VR asset and scene review experience.
- Built a bespoke 3D pipeline into Unity for an Augmented Reality theme park production.
- Owned the technical development, roadmapping, and operational direction of critical pipeline software supporting all active feature film and animation productions.
- Managed and mentored a dual team of Pipeline Technical Directors and Layout Artists across multiple concurrent visual effects and animated feature films.
- Researched, designed, and executed a successful Proof of Concept port of the studio's legacy asset pipeline to utilize Pixar's open-source Universal Scene Description (USD).
Pipeline TD and Layout Artist, Sony Pictures Imageworks
January 2013 - October 2016
- Designed and shipped a new Shot Publishing and Validation toolset adopted by every active production at the studio and used daily by hundreds of digital artists.
- Designed and engineered a Deep Compositing toolset that enabled multiple animators to collaborate on the same shot simultaneously, eliminating a legacy production bottleneck.
- Created a dynamic scene origin plugin for Maya alongside a full pipeline integration to handle rendering and layout coordinates for large-scale production environments.
- Wrote a procedural muscle simulation pipeline with Ziva that significantly reduced required Character FX resources and freed artists to iterate faster.
- Developed core production software and provided artist support for VFX and animation shows.
- Executed precise camera, background plate, and scene layout configurations across a diverse mix of live-action visual effects and full-CG shots.
Animation Support TD & Scene Layout, Rhythm & Hues
June 2012 - January 2013
- Engineered prototype Python bindings and a custom integrated development environment (IDE) for Parsley, the studio's proprietary core language.
- Designed custom scene lighting management utilities and a standardized digital color management pipeline for production artists.
- Developed core operational tools, workflows, and automated scripts for Voodoo, the studio's foundational in-house software system.
- Executed camera layout configurations and established foundational pre-lighting setups for complex live-action visual effects sequences.
- Partnered directly with animators to troubleshoot, optimize, and script interactive characters, production scenes, and animation rigs.
- Wrote and deployed automated internal tools to streamline technical support ticket submissions and resource management.