Sam Connolly

Principal Ai Developer @Blizzard Entertainment

GB

As a Principal Software Engineer at Blizzard, I develop advanced AI systems and supporting tools using Unity’s Entity Component System (ECS). My work focuses on agent perception, spatial reasoning, decision‑making, and high‑performance data‑oriented programming.I implemented a perception and knowledge model that allows AI agents to track awareness and maintain contextual understanding of other entities entirely within an ECS architecture. To support deeper insight into behaviour, I built extensive debugging tools that let developers scrub through agent actions and examine how decisions evolve over time.I designed and delivered high‑performance environment query systems that run efficiently across multiple threads, enabling agents to evaluate and navigate their surroundings at scale. I also created visualization tools that expose these queries in an intuitive way, helping designers quickly understand how agents interpret the world.To ensure system stability and maintainability, I built integration tests for complex agent behaviour and developed unit‑testing frameworks tailored to ECS‑based AI features. I also improved components of a utility‑theory‑based decision system and implemented editor-facing tagging and targeting workflows, empowering designers to mark and reference entities in flexible ways.I work extensively with Unity’s Data Oriented Tech Stack (DOTS) and Burst, writing highly optimized, parallel‑friendly C# code suited for both high‑performance and mobile hardware. My responsibilities also include profiling and debugging on devices to ensure consistent behaviour across platforms.In addition to my engineering work, I host a monthly learning group where developers gather to watch and discuss industry talks—fostering a culture of continuous learning within the studio.

University of Lancashire

Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Games Development