Elli Shapiro
Associate Technical Director @King
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WORK HISTORY
Associate Technical Director @King
As an Associate Technical Director on Candy Crush Soda Saga, I shape the technical direction of gameplay systems, content workflows, and player-facing experiences, enabling fast, creative iteration and influencing practices and quality in the Gameplay and Monetisation Domain and across Soda.Highlights:• Leading technical strategy for the Gameplay teams while driving delivery models and practices across the wider domain, and shaping Soda-wide development practices including Definition of Done, Incremental Delivery, and AI strategy.• Directing the late stages of the core match-3 engine rewrite - stabilising a high-risk project, re-roadmapping remaining work, and lifting team accountability to restore delivery predictability and unlock future systems and player-experience opportunities.• Leading systems and tooling improvements that automate level adjustment, balancing, sequencing, and distribution, reducing manual overhead and giving designers more space to focus on creative intent, progression flow, and overall game feel.• Seeding and shaping new systems through discovery and production to improve difficulty balancing, flexible content progression, content scheduling, and overall player experience, aligning design intent with technical direction.• Guiding AI strategy for all of Soda engineering, defining guardrails and adoption practices, and securing alignment and buy-in across teams.• Managing senior and principal engineers, an Engineering Manager, a Senior Technical Level Designer, and contractor teams across Gameplay and Monetisation; mentoring talent and raising delivery standards while shaping an emerging technical–design subdiscipline that strengthens collaboration between engineering and design.• Representing G&M’s product and technical needs to centralised King and Soda tech and design tooling teams, negotiating priorities, supporting improved editor workflows, and advocating for long-term designer autonomy and scalable content creation.
EDUCATION
UCL
Master in Science (MSci), Mathematics with Theoretical Physics
SKILLS
ABOUT ELLI SHAPIRO
An experienced leader of creative, technical teams. Autonomous, proactive and pragmatic, I specialise in cross discipline collaboration and take a holistic, design first approach in the creation of fun and intuitive gameplay.
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