Taylor Balbi

Lead Software Engineer | Technical Lead | Engineering Manager

Profile

Engineering leader, technical founder, and full-stack software engineer with experience building web, mobile, gaming, analytics, and creator-economy platforms from prototype through acquisition. Proven track record leading small engineering teams, architecting scalable systems, and turning ambiguous product ideas into production-ready software.

Experienced in JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Node.js, real-time systems, cloud platforms, data-intensive applications, AI-assisted development, and game systems. Strong background in technical strategy, roadmap ownership, hiring, mentoring, sprint planning, system architecture, and hands-on product execution.

Professional Experience

CTO & Co-Founder

Puggernaut, LLC | Remote

  • Co-founded an independent game development studio focused on mobile gaming, gamified fitness, and custom gameplay systems.
  • Led a team of 3 contract software engineers, providing technical direction, sprint planning, roadmap ownership, and contractor evaluations.
  • Architected custom game AI behavior using Goal-Oriented Action Planning and designed a custom A* pathfinding system.
  • Guided Spirit Buffs from concept to a near feature-complete prototype while balancing gameplay, product, and technical constraints.

Lead Engineer

Infiniscene, Inc. / Lightstream | Remote

  • Led 5 engineers as technical lead and people leader, owning architecture, sprint execution, hiring, 1:1s, reviews, and delivery.
  • Guided Arsenal.gg technology into Rainmaker.gg, a B2B and B2C platform for broadcaster analytics, influencer marketing, and campaigns.
  • Designed a B2B marketing campaign system that enabled brands to discover, track, and collaborate with live broadcasters.
  • Expanded monitoring across major live-broadcasting platforms, tracking hundreds of thousands of broadcasters every 10 minutes.
  • Helped operate a data-intensive platform that processed billions of broadcast snapshots with near-100% uptime.

CTO & Co-Founder

Arsenal.gg | Remote

  • Co-founded and architected an enterprise analytics platform for tracking video game streamers and live-broadcasting activity.
  • Built the initial working prototype in 3 months, enabling rapid customer validation and early sales conversations.
  • Led a team of 3, owning product architecture, technical strategy, hiring, sprint planning, and early-stage engineering execution.
  • Played a key role in the company acquisition by Infiniscene / Lightstream in 2019, 19 months after founding.

Software Designer V

Hewlett Packard Enterprise | Roseville, CA

  • Led UI development for a ground-up React rewrite of enterprise cloud billing management software after the Cloud Cruiser acquisition.
  • Helped modernize frontend architecture, user experience, and maintainability for an enterprise cloud billing platform.
  • Participated in interviewing and hiring new engineers, contributing to team growth and technical evaluation.

Senior Software Engineer

Cloud Cruiser, Inc. | Roseville, CA

  • Implemented frontend UI/UX designs for an enterprise cloud billing and cost-management platform.
  • Designed and implemented a forecasting system for projecting cloud spend from existing usage data.
  • Translated complex cloud usage and billing data into clear frontend experiences before Cloud Cruiser's acquisition by HPE.

Personal Projects

TCG-Sim.com

AI-assisted development case study for a user-created online card game simulator with multiplayer gameplay, matchmaking, uploadable games, and a $0/month operating-cost goal.

TCG Draft

Solo-developed multiplayer drafting platform with custom algorithms for simulating pack-opening and draft experiences across various trading card games.

Matchpoint.gg

Solo-developed competitive matchmaking platform for the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate community, including match reporting, leaderboards, Discord support, and ELO ranking. Now offline.