Zak Middleton
Principal Engineer at Level
United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolZak Middleton is a Principal Engineer with two decades of game and engine programming experience and a track record of shipping eight titles, including work on Fortnite, Robo Recall, and core Unreal Engine 4/5 systems. He specializes in C++ engine and gameplay design, deep 3D math, and low-level CPU, memory, and network optimizations—often targeting AVX and precision improvements in core math libraries for large-world support. Zak has led teams and mentored engineers while partnering closely with design to turn prototypes into polished gameplay (weapons, movement, enemy systems) and has repeatedly taken ownership of performance targets and anti-cheat/network bandwidth constraints. His work spans consoles, PC, and VR, and includes tooling and build-time improvements that materially sped up development cycles. With MS and BS degrees from Stanford, he combines academic rigor with pragmatic engineering and a penchant for improving engines so teams can deliver more creative gameplay.
12 years of coding experience
20 years of employment as a software developer
MS Computer Science, MS Computer Science at Stanford University
Github Skills (7)
epic10
unreal10
animation9
blueprint9
unreal-engine-48
game-development8
testing2
Github contributions (5)
karabaos/UnrealVN
Apr 2014 - Mar 2015
Contributions:373 commits in 10 months
unrealengine47/UnrealEngine4
May 2015 - Jun 2015
Contributions:60 commits in 1 month
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