Dan Fessler
Senior Software Engineer
Executive Summary
I've spent the last 20 years working in the games industry primarily in art and creative leadership roles, but throughout it all I've maintained my passion for frontend development with a focus on web development, creative tools, and visual programming languages. This resume highlights my technical expertise and software engineering accomplishments throughout my career.
Highlights
- 20 years experience software development (primarily games)
- 10+ Years in creative executive leadership roles
- Proficient in HTML/CSS, Javascript, Typescript, and React (10 years)
- Full-stack experience with Node, Express, Socket.IO, Firebase, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL
- Shipped Games, Tools, Web Services, and OSS
Experience
Senior Software Engineer
RobloxAug 2025 - present
Senior Software Engineer on Roblox's Expression team, building avatar expression features that power player-facing Avatar experiences.
Highlights
- Built and shipped expression features for Avatar experiences in collaboration with product, design, and partner engineering teams
- Developed UI and systems that improve avatar expressiveness, performance, and reliability at scale
- Contributed to team-wide engineering quality through design reviews, code reviews, and pragmatic iteration
Co-founder
Incite Interactive2023 - 2025
I co-founded Incite interactive with a mission to incite the best stories in games with AI, and launched the world's first Agentic UGC platform, Incite Worlds. Leveraging our technology, Incite is building the next generation life sim, called Auravale.
Highlights
- Funded by A16z's Speedrun Accelerator
- Develeoped and open-sourced a React UI library for dockable tabbed window management (React/Typescript)
- Designed and developed a novel AI-native visual programming language for Incite Worlds (React)
- Designed and developed Incite's corporate website (Svelte)
- Design and development on InciteWorlds.com UGC platform (React/Remix)
- Directed and developed the Character costmetics and animation pipeline for Auravale.io (Unity/C#)
- Wrote custom shaders and materials for Auravale.io (HLSL/Shadergraph)
Projects
Chief Visual Officer
Manticore Games2017 - 2023
I joined Manticore as employee #1 with a mission to build the next generation UGC platform, called Core. As Chief Visual Officer, I reported directly to the CEO overseeing all visual creative departments, directly managing a team of over 30 artists, designers, and contractors
Highlights
- Designed and developed Manticore's corporate website (React/SSG)
- Designed and developed a web-based interactive world map (Canvas2D/JS)
- Developed a visual programming language that compiles to Lua for Core (React/JS)
- Wrote custom shaders and materials for the Core UGC platform, including a novel "smart" triplanar material system, and 3D 9-slice materials (HLSL/Blueprint)
- Directed all creative visual departments including UI/UX, Web, Tools, Marketing, Brand Partnerships, First Party experiences, and Character Cosmetics
Projects
Art Director
Zynga2012 - 2016
I was bought to Zynga with the acquisition of A Bit Lucky as Art Director on titles including Solstice Arena, Empires and Allies, Mountain Goat Mountain, and Farmville. Later I joined the R&D division which prototyped forward-thinking concepts including VR and experimental social games.
Highlights
- Wrote vehicle physics for Rocketleague-inspired VR Game (Unity/C#)
- Designed and Prototyped the UI/UX for Picture This social game (Unity/C#)
- Wrote Solsice Arena's Character asset pipeline tools (HTML/PHP)
- Wrote Shaders and Materials for various titles including, Solstice Arena, Mountain Goat Mountain, Picture This, and VR Ball (HLSL/ShaderGraph)
Projects
Lead Artist
A Bit Lucky2010 - 2012
A Bit Lucky was founded in 2010 to make high quality social games on Facebook. I was hired as the founding member of the art department, but quickly grew my responsibilities to management and direction roles.
Highlights
- Developed animation tools for Lucky Train and Lucky Space (HTML/JS/PHP)
- Designed and developed store-front UI for Lucky Space (HTML/JS)
- Wrote 3ds Max render scripts and Photoshop scripts for internal Art Pipelines
- Streamlined the art pipeline to maintain consistent quality and fast turn-around
- Managed, directed, and tasked in-house and outsourced art teams
Projects
Senior Artist
Glu Mobile2008 - 2009
Senior Artist on Family Guy Uncensored and other mobile titles
Highlights
- Lead Artist on "Family Guy: Uncensored" for mobile and iPhone
- Specialized in animation for in-game sprites
- Ported art assets for various devices and screen resolutions
Junior 2D Artist
Gameloft2007 - 2008
Pixel artist on New York Nights and other mobile titles
Highlights
- Specialized in tiled backgrounds/scenes for "New York Nights 2"
- Created polished game mock-ups to pitch prospective titles
- Developed in-game, concept, and UI art content
Freelance Artist
Self-Employed2005 - 2006
Contract artwork for MGA/Mattel on various electronic toys
Highlights
- Created pixel art for various electronic toys and games
- Worked with major toy manufacturers including MGA and Mattel
- Developed art assets for multiple platforms and devices
Miscellaneous Projects
React-Dockable
A React library to create beautiful dockable tabbed interfaces for tools, editors, and more. Used by InciteWorlds.com
View Project →React-PanelGroup
An Open Source react component for resizable panel layouts, used by Meta. Over 80k downloads on NPM. Also leveraged by React Dockable
View Project →Index Painter
A pixel art editor written in React/Typescript which natively implements HD Index Painting and uses webgl for graphics accelerated drawing
View Project →ctx game engine
A web-first game engine with a unity-like editor and component system with a canvas2D renderer. Leverages React-Dockable for its UI
View Project →Huddle Voice Chat
A virtual office voice-chat application which uses the concept of proximity-based "huddles" to connect users.
View Project →Routinify
A productivity app to encourage and maintain personal routines without scheduling
View Project →Core Visual Programming
A prototype developed for Core Games to allow for visual scripting in editor. At runtime, the graph compiles to LUA using Core's API. Written in React
View Project →Incite Visual Programming
A prototype developed for Incite Worlds to allow for visual scripting of Agentic scenarios using LLM-powered "language gates"
View Project →Parsnip
A simple yet powerful parser generator for JavaScript allowing you to write custom domain specific languages using an object-based grammar schema. Used for my own custom DSL projects.
View Project →BASIN
A lightweight AST (abstract syntax tree) interpreter & runtime built in javascript.
View Project →