Yerevan · working worldwide · UTC+4

David Mkrtchian

Tech Lead & Senior Engineer — Unity 3D (C#) on one side, Node.js backends on the other.

Thirteen years shipping the full vertical slice: realtime multiplayer clients, live in-game economies, and AI infrastructure that holds at 100K requests a minute.

davidmcarati@gmail.com LinkedIn GitHub Telegram
01

Profile

I own the whole slice — the pixel and the packet.

I'm a dual-stack engineer and hands-on technical lead built on a rare pairing: Unity 3D / C# client development on one side, production Node.js / TypeScript backend engineering on the other. Realtime gameplay and 3D clients; scalable services, REST and WebSocket APIs, live in-game economies.

Equally at home leading people and writing code — I've built and led engineering teams of up to 24, set quality and delivery standards, and run 200+ technical interviews. Most recently I brought the same rigor to high-load AI systems, integrating LLM-based workflows across four concurrent products.

Game development is my home discipline, but the underlying craft — architecture, real-time systems, backend scale — carries across domains.

Years shipping
13+
Requests / minute, AI infra
100K+
Concurrent game rooms
500
Players, one session
128+
Engineers led
24
Technical interviews
200+
02

Career

  1. — now

    Tech Lead · Armenian Artificial Intelligence Company

    Technical direction across four concurrent AI products, hands-on in Node.js / TypeScript. Cloud architecture processing 100K+ requests per minute; LLM workflows (LangChain) in production; automated testing that cut QA effort fourfold; 100% on-time delivery on Critical Chain.

    • Node.js
    • TypeScript
    • LLM infra
    • 20+ engineers
  2. — 2024

    Senior Unity + Node.js Developer · Oxalis Games, London — Moonfrost

    Core engineer on a midcore free-to-play RPG with a live economy — features owned end-to-end across the Unity client and Node.js backend. Token economy powering 15,000+ players, client-server infrastructure for 500 simultaneous rooms, multiplayer gameplay for 128+ concurrent players, designer tools managing 40,000+ objects.

    • Unity
    • Node.js
    • Live economy
    • Multiplayer
  3. — 2023

    Technical Lead (contract) · Morpheus XR, Miami

    Cross-platform releases on five platforms; real-time platform scaled to 500+ users in a single room; operational costs cut 50% after an architecture audit. Interactive Unity experiences for Meta, Autodesk, Gensler, and Randstad.

    • XR
    • 5 platforms
    • Enterprise
  4. — 2022

    Technical Lead · ZiMAD

    Led up to 7 Unity engineers on a live mobile puzzle title; promoted from Senior to Tech Lead within two months. Release-process optimization lifted a project's weekly revenue by 50%; Sentry integration cut bug resolution time 2–3×.

    • Unity
    • LiveOps
    • Mobile F2P
  5. — 2021

    Software Development Manager · TUMO Center for Creative Technologies

    Led a team building educational Unity applications: 40+ mini-games, a self-guided game-dev curriculum that trained 5,000+ students, and a content pipeline that saved 20+ hours weekly and let non-engineers publish.

    • Education
    • Unity
    • Tooling
  6. — 2018

    Full Stack / Game Developer · EXIOS

    High-load delivery-monitoring platform processing 500K+ orders for Philip Morris Armenia; custom-physics game shipped on Facebook Instant Games.

    • High-load
    • Full stack
  7. — 2016

    Game Developer · Double Coconut

    Ported 50+ 3D games from Flash to Unity 5 — rebuilt gameplay and client systems, added iOS and WebGL support. Daily casual games for iWin.

    • Unity
    • WebGL
    • 50+ ports

Backend & services

Node.js · TypeScript · Express · REST · WebSockets · MongoDB · distributed systems · live economies & wallets

Client & engine

Unity 3D · C# · gameplay & combat systems · multiplayer networking · profiling & optimization · iOS / Android / desktop / Oculus / WebGL

AI

LLM systems · LangChain · high-load AI integration · AI-assisted development workflows across teams

Leadership

Teams up to 24 · engineering standards · code review culture · hiring & 200+ interviews · Critical Chain · CI/CD · Sentry

03

Selected work

Case study · Reverse engineering · Software preservation · Playable Becoming President, again — a Flash-to-HTML5 resurrection A dead 2007 Armenian game — a Flash movie welded to a .NET brain, its assets AES-256-encrypted, its text trapped in a legacy font — brought back as a static, plugin-free web app. Decrypted 25 asset files, decompiled 17,282 lines, reimplemented the brain in TypeScript, and bridged 40 FSCommands into Ruffle with ~30 lines injected into the original SWF. Playable right here on this site. AES-256 asset decryption 17,282 lines decompiled Ruffle + TypeScript brain ▶ Playable at /president/ Read the case study →
Case study · Product & security design ShowUP — designing a security-centered app A social network built around local events, where a leak isn't embarrassing — it's a stranger knowing where you'll be on Friday night. How one threat model shaped everything: five defense layers, eight database-enforced invariants, per-event alias identity, and the screens that carry each guarantee. Threat modelling Postgres RLS Alias identity engine 19 live mockups Read the case study →
Case study · Procedural generation · Unity / WebGL · live demo CityKit — a city built from painted cells A quiet multiplayer world where the only people you meet are the notes they left behind — and the procedural generator that grows its city. No imported models, no textures: neighbour-aware modules, draw calls that scale with colors instead of objects, and a paint-mode editor. The case study runs a seeded sketch of the generator right in your browser. ~2,000 lines of C# 0 models · 0 textures Deterministic seeds Interactive demo Read the case study →
Research synthesis · Computational neuroscience Why can't we mimic even a fraction of our brain — yet A cited walk through the brain-simulation gap: what a single Hodgkin–Huxley neuron actually costs to compute, why network-scale simulation runs into Frontier-sized energy budgets, what dendrites compute that our models flatten away — and why the gap is architectural, not just a matter of more FLOPS. Hodgkin–Huxley → Frontier scale 14 papers cited Biology vs silicon Order-of-magnitude honest Read the synthesis →
Case study · Open-source fork · TypeScript / React Capacitor — an Element fork tuned for daily use The same end-to-end-encrypted Matrix client underneath, with the everyday experience rebuilt to feel like the chat apps people already know: a Slack-style room list, threads surfaced in the sidebar, a GIF picker, and quieter chrome — built Element's way, so the fork stays mergeable. Element / Matrix +1,712 lines · 50 files MVVM · tested · i18n 7 features shipped Read the case study →
04

Writing

All essays →

Long-form engineering essays from the trenches of a Unity-WebGL virtual physics lab — architecture decisions with the derivations left in.

05

Playground

Three.js · WebGL The Museum A 3D gallery where the paintings are live shaders — Lorenz attractors, Mandelbrot zooms, wave superposition — each labelled with how it's used in game development. Enter → Canvas · Pixel art Sprite Editor A browser pixel-art editor — draw, animate, and export sprites without leaving the tab. Open →
06

Straight answers

Full CV →
Are you available to hire?

Yes — open to founding engineer, tech lead, principal/staff, and CTO-track roles, plus senior contract engagements. I work remotely with teams worldwide from Yerevan, Armenia (UTC+4), which overlaps European hours and the early US East Coast day. Fastest route: davidmcarati@gmail.com.

Why a founding engineer rather than a specialist?

A founding engineer has to own a whole product surface alone. My dual stack means no handoffs: I build the realtime client, the scalable backend, and the internal tooling that lets everyone else move. I've repeatedly been the person who ships the first version and the process around it — a token economy for 15,000+ players, designer tools managing 40,000+ objects, LiveOps automation, and test infrastructure that cut QA effort fourfold.

What's the largest scale you've built for?

AI infrastructure at 100K+ requests per minute. Client-server architecture for 500 simultaneous game rooms. Unity multiplayer with 128+ concurrent players in one fully-synchronized session. A realtime XR platform scaled to 500+ users in a single room. A delivery-monitoring platform processing 500K+ orders for Philip Morris Armenia.

What technologies do you specialize in?

Backend: Node.js, TypeScript, Express, REST, WebSockets, MongoDB, distributed systems, live in-game economies. Client & engine: C#, Unity 3D, multiplayer networking, performance profiling, WebGL, WebAssembly, shaders, and cross-platform delivery to iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and Oculus. AI: LLM systems, LangChain, high-load AI integration. Also Python, Docker, Kubernetes, and GCP.

Do you still write code, or only manage?

Every day. I've led teams up to 24 engineers and run 200+ technical interviews, but the leadership is hands-on — architecture, implementation, and code reviews in Node.js and TypeScript. Everything in the writing and work sections above came out of my own editor.

How much AI/LLM work have you really done?

Since November 2024 I've owned technical direction across four concurrent AI products: LangChain-based LLM workflows in production, infrastructure at 100K+ requests per minute, automated testing for non-deterministic AI responses, and AI-assisted development practices rolled out across 20+ engineers.

Where can I see examples of your work?

Five detailed case studies and nine long-form essays, all on this site: a Flash-to-HTML5 reverse-engineering project that resurrected a dead 2007 game (playable here); a security-centered app design with eight database-enforced invariants; a procedural city generator with a live browser demo; a fork of the Element Matrix client; a computational-neuroscience synthesis; and the essays.

What are you like to work with?

I optimize for the balance between technical excellence and business delivery — after adopting Critical Chain, my team hit 100% on-time release delivery. I write things down (50+ pages of standards at Morpheus XR), I audit before I add (50% hosting cost reduction), and I'd rather fix the process than the same bug twice.

07

Contact

Have a system that needs to hold under load?

Backends, multiplayer, AI infrastructure, or a team that needs a lead — I'd love to hear about it.

Emaildavidmcarati@gmail.com LinkedIndavidmkrtchyan GitHubdavidmcarati Telegram@mcarati