Engineering & Production Leader

I build teams that ship. Then I build the systems that keep them shipping.

I started as a programmer, became a producer, then led engineering organisations of 100+ people. That progression isn't common anymore — but it means you're getting someone who understands the work at every layer, from the codebase to the org chart. With AI reshaping what teams can do, that depth is the difference between adopting tools that genuinely help and just making the same mistakes faster.

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Will Musson

Does any of this sound familiar?

Your team has grown but delivery has slowed down

More people, more meetings, less shipping. Decisions that used to take a conversation now take a committee.

A recent reorg isn't landing

New squads, new leads, new process — and it's not landing. People are confused about who owns what, and the work is falling between the gaps.

Engineering and design are building different things

They're only finding out at the end of a sprint. The roadmap says one thing, the backlog says another, and nobody's confident in either.

Good people have stopped taking initiative

They're waiting for approval on things they should feel confident deciding themselves. The team is capable — but something in the way the organisation operates is holding them back.

These aren't technology problems. They're structure, communication, and trust problems. And they're what I spend my time fixing.

Ownership, trust, autonomy

Teams ship best when they understand the direction clearly enough to make decisions without checking upstairs. The job is to make the vision concrete and the boundaries visible — then get out of the way.

When someone on a team can explain why they're building something, not just what, that's when it's working.

Most of the time, the fix isn't a new process or a better tool. It's finding the habits that quietly eroded trust and ownership — and replacing them with clarity. Which ones to introduce and which to strip back depends on the team. Every org has its own history. Some of those habits are good. Some outlived their purpose. The skill is telling the difference — with the team, not to them.

If something isn't going to ship on time, it's better to say so early. If the plan is wrong, it's better to change it than defend it. Teams respond well to candour when it comes with respect — and when it's followed by a proposal, not just a diagnosis.

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What I Do

One role, many hats

The Games Producer role is a composite leadership function. Over 30 years, I've performed the duties of all of these simultaneously, often under conditions where scope, team, and constraints were shifting at the same time:

Project Manager Product Owner Scrum Master Programme Manager People Manager Engineering Manager Delivery Manager Technical Program Manager

Team Building at Scale

Grown and managed engineering organisations of 100+ people.

Delivery Leadership

Full lifecycle ownership across multi-year, multi-studio programmes.

Cross-Functional Alignment

Bridging engineering, art, design, and product across titles like Far Cry and Watch Dogs.

Operating Model Design

Evolved a specialist technology group into a 45-person multidisciplinary platform team.

Technical Foundation

Career roots in programming. Conversations with engineers start from shared understanding.

Stakeholder & Partner Management

Built trust across studio leadership, publishers, and cross-studio collaborations.

Writing

In my own words

Writing publicly is new for me, but there are things I've learned over time that I think could be useful so I've been trying to write them down. Published on Substack.

The bottleneck used to be implementation; more and more, it's understanding what you actually need.

"They just have better tools now."

Smaller teams, sharper tools

If AI makes it quick to build functional software, small teams can stop buying tools built for everyone and start building tools that actually fit. The bottleneck shifts from implementation to understanding what you actually need.

Series: Building a Job Search System

A three-part series on building structure, running a search like a product, and using AI without outsourcing your thinking — and the essay that distilled it all into a single principle.

Part 1

Professional resilience isn't just skills and experience

Owning a structure for your thinking matters more than any single skill or line on a CV.

Part 2

Running my job search like a product system

Treats the job search as a product with a backlog, flow states, and an audit trail.

Part 3

Using AI in a job search that already has a brain

AI prepares the material for thinking; it does not do the thinking.

The essay

It's Not About the Tool

Teams with strong fundamentals get more effective with new tools; teams without them make the same mistakes faster.

Career

Where this was built

One company, many roles. Everything below happened at Ubisoft Reflections in Newcastle upon Tyne, with the engineering manager role also spanning Ubisoft Leamington.

Apr 2024 – Apr 2025

Producer — New IP

Gameplay Producer on a new IP, coordinating multiple disciplines and moving from early validation towards a clearer feature set.

  • Streamlined the master feature list so decisions were made faster and scope was visible to everyone involved.
  • Restructured the team into cross-discipline groups with clear ownership, improving autonomy and speeding up decisions.
  • Set practical planning, review and risk-tracking routines that maintained momentum while protecting quality.

Mar 2022 – Apr 2024

Studio Engineering Manager

Ubisoft Reflections & Ubisoft Leamington

Led the studio's engineering population of 100+ engineers across two locations, managing leads and senior leads across multiple projects.

  • Led the annual talent cycle: performance management, promotions, hiring and career progression, keeping decisions fair and consistent.
  • Advised on team composition and structure for several projects, aligning project needs with studio-wide priorities.
  • Developed a skills-by-team and headcount plan so each project had the right engineers at the right time.

Mar 2020 – Mar 2022

Producer — Tom Clancy IP

Producer supporting multiple teams working under Ubisoft Tom Clancy brand guidelines.

  • Translated complex brand requirements into an internal data and insights tool used across multiple titles.
  • Directed development of a web-based tool that exposed games, factions, characters and connections in one place, so teams across titles could validate decisions quickly.

Mar 2019 – Mar 2020

Producer — Studio Initiative

Shaped a studio-wide talent initiative built around a university competition, defining the brief and criteria to surface candidates with skills matching the studio's needs.

2014 – 2019

Producer — Vehicle Specialist Team

Producer for a vehicle-handling technology group that evolved into a multidisciplinary shared platform team of 45+ people.

  • Led the transition from a specialist technology group into a clearly branded internal platform team used by multiple game teams in parallel.
  • Owned end-to-end delivery of a shared software platform used concurrently by multiple titles, aligning scope, timelines, risks and stakeholders.
  • Coordinated collaboration across Canadian time zones with predictable overlap windows to protect team health.

2012 – 2014

Producer — The Crew

Broadened the team's remit across gameplay, art and audio, establishing clear feature ownership. Took responsibility for the PlayStation SKU and collaborated with the lead studio in France.

1994 – 2012

Engineering & Programming Roles

Progressive engineering roles from Junior Programmer through to Lead Programmer and Project Technical Lead.

  • Project Technical Lead on a large open-world driving game running at 60fps with zero loading, coordinating engine, gameplay and platform work.
  • Led the technical delivery of a core gameplay mechanic that defined the game's identity and contributed to its critical reception.
  • Built broad gameplay and engine experience across multiple titles and hardware generations.
  • Introduced and embedded agile practices (Scrum, Kanban) within programming teams.

Shipped titles

Far Cry 6 Far Cry 5 Watch Dogs: Legion Watch Dogs 2 Ghost Recon: Wildlands Assassin's Creed Syndicate The Crew Driver: San Francisco Driver Destruction Derby

Say Hello

Open to conversations

Whether it's an opportunity, an idea, or just a conversation worth having, then drop me an email or connect below.

Let's talk

Based in Newcastle, open to remote and hybrid across the UK and EU.

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