Michael Galbraith Purvis
Technical Leadership · Project & Product Management
Fort Collins, CO · open to remote
founder@contextarcana.com
Experience
20 yrs
Vehicle programs
3 concurrent
Teams led
3–5 eng
Doc effort cut
6 mo → 2
Engineering leader with 20 years in new-product development, moving deliberately from hands-on engineering into project and product leadership. I've led cross-functional delivery across three vehicle programs at an EV manufacturer; managed a 5-engineer R&D team and third-party development studios in regulated casino gaming; carried Project Manager and Site Manager duties on a federal simulation contract while titled Senior Software Engineer; and founded a consultancy where I own scope, schedule, phased delivery plans, and client outcomes end to end. Deep, current fluency in generative-AI tooling and AI-assisted delivery — and pursuing PMP certification. A career spent building demanding real-time software, now focused on leading the teams and programs that deliver products.
Skills
Program & Delivery
Project planning · schedules & milestonesJIRA · Agile (Scrum, Kanban)MS ProjectPhased specs & acceptance criteriaReview gates & documentation controlRisk surfacing & escalationProcess improvement
Leadership
Cross-functional team leadershipHiring & interview panelsMentoringThird-party / vendor managementStakeholder communication & demosRequirements refinement with users
Automation & AI
Generative-AI-assisted deliveryAgentic workflow designLLM toolingAutomation pipelinesComputer vision (OpenCV)
Technical Foundation — 20 years
C++C# / .NETPythonJavaScript / TypeScriptSQLEmbedded/automotive · console · web · cloud · mobile
Selected Work
Experience
Founder & Principal · Context Arcana LLC
May 2026 – Present
Run client engagements end to end — discovery, requirements refinement with non-technical stakeholders, phased implementation plans, delivery, and support — owning scope, schedule, and outcomes.
- Planned and delivered an online art-registration and delivery platform across five coordinated workstreams (computer-vision pipeline, WebGL rendering, cloud/database services, mobile app, admin console), managed through written phase specifications with explicit acceptance criteria and stakeholder review gates.
- Built an AI-native delivery practice: generative-AI-assisted development, automated content pipelines, and a Stripe-integrated automated storefront operating with minimal human intervention.
Staff Real-Time Software Engineer (Pre-Seed) · Prodigy Labs — The Art of Intelligence
Oct 2025 – Jun 2026
Built the real-time MetaHuman layer of an AI-mentor platform fusing Unreal Engine Pixel Streaming with a cloud agentic LLM backend.
- Implemented MetaHuman behavior and animation blending for live conversational sessions.
- Built the RPC link between Unreal Engine and the cloud agent; debugged Pixel Streaming performance and graphics.
Director of Engineering (Pre-Seed) · Grimigeon Games
Jun 2025 – Apr 2026
Founding leadership for a UE5 studio: set technical pillars and direction, led gameplay engineering, and ran engineering hiring.
Senior Software Engineer (Contract) · Mercor Intelligence
Jan 2025 – Aug 2025
Authored prompts, evaluations, and test harnesses used to train advanced AI models on complex C++/Python software-engineering tasks — annotation and grading of model output as part of a large engineering team. Built AI developer-productivity tooling; the immersion that grounds my current generative-AI fluency.
Lead HMI Software Engineer · Canoo
Nov 2021 – Jan 2025
Led the 3-engineer UI/HMI team delivering the main touchscreen and dash-display products across three vehicle programs — the coordination point between design, engineering, and vehicle-program schedules.
- Owned HMI architecture (C++, Qt/QML, Unreal Engine) and aligned schedule and scope with vehicle-program milestones across three concurrent programs.
- Ran hiring, engineering interview panels, mentoring, and internal demos; drove team standards and set performance budgets that took embedded UI from 8 to 60+ fps.
8→60+ fps
Unreal Engine on NXP i.MX8 automotive hardware
Senior Systems Engineer · Heart Machine
Apr 2021 – Nov 2021
Shipped Solar Ash (PS4 / PS5 / PC, Dec 2021): UI and systems programming in Unreal Engine C++ and Blueprints.
Software Engineer IV → Team Lead · Konami Gaming, Inc.
Jun 2019 – Apr 2021
Team Lead in Games R&D — directed planning, tasking, and time budgeting for a 5-engineer team in a compliance-driven, regulated gaming environment.
- Managed a team of 5 engineers: planning, tasking, time budgeting, interviewing, and mentoring.
- Managed and trained third-party development studios on Konami's development process and hardware — vendor oversight from onboarding through on-platform release in a regulated industry.
Senior Game Programmer / Team Lead · United Power
Aug 2018 – Jun 2019
Team lead and JavaScript game programmer for a web-based MMO.
- PlayCanvas, Vue, Apollo/GraphQL, HTML5, WebGL shader programming.
Software Engineer III · Konami Gaming, Inc.
Feb 2017 – Aug 2018
C++ development and debugging for video slot machine games.
- Evaluated Unreal Engine 4 and prototyped for a next-gen game platform.
- Built internal C# tooling.
Earlier Experience
Jul 2016 – Jan 2017
Simulation Software Developer · TecMasters, Inc. — C++ programming for modeling & simulation applications; GUI work with GTK.
Aug 2015 – Jul 2016
Simulation Software Developer · Alatec, Inc. — C++ refactoring from legacy C to modern object-oriented C++ to meet military requirements.
Oct 2013 – Jul 2015
Software Engineer III · Midnight Studios — Designed and led development for a small UE4 arcade game; shipped GUI features enabling 4-player local splitscreen for Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel.
Mar 2012 – Oct 2013
Principal Software Engineer · Janus Research Group — Led the FBI Crime Scene Training Game; built a Python documentation-automation tool that cut a 6-month deliverable to 2 months.
Oct 2011 – Mar 2012
Software Analyst III · Alatec, Inc. — Java 2D graphics for military simulation; engineering documentation automation.
Nov 2009 – Oct 2011
Senior Software Engineer · Chickasaw Nation Industries — Designed an intelligent-agent military simulation; took on Project Manager and Site Manager duties in year two while titled Senior Software Engineer — program planning in MS Project; recruited and hired the engineering and art team.
Dec 2008 – Nov 2009
Software Analyst I · Alatec, Inc. — Wargame and ground-combat simulation programming; built a GUI tool suite for scenario creation for COMBATXI.
Sep 2006 – Oct 2008
Application Programmer · Lifetouch National Studios — Office automation for assembly and printing using C#, VB, SQL, and .NET.
May 2007 – Aug 2007
Intern Programmer · White Wolf / CCP North America — Developed a combat-system prototype for the MMO World of Darkness (Python in EVE engine).
Education
The Art Institutes of California (San Francisco, CA)
Sep 2005 – Dec 2008
B.S. — Visual & Game Programming · GPA 3.5
Heald Institute of Technology (San Francisco, CA)
Jan 1994 – Jul 1996
A.S. — Electronics Technology · GPA 3.8
Certifications
Claude 101 · Anthropic (2026)
Applied Agentic AI for Software Engineers · Interview Kickstart (2025)
Computer Vision · OpenCV (2025)
Pixar Certificate for RenderMan · Pixar / Autodesk Maya
Service
Specialist E-4, M1A1 Armor Crewmember (19K10), U.S. Army
Jan 1990 – Dec 1993
Operations: Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Desert Defense; Honorable Discharge.