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.

Let's talk ↓ Read my thinking ↓
Will Musson

What I Do

Skills built from the inside out

These aren't abstract competencies. Each one was forged by doing the work, from writing engine code to running a 100-person engineering group.

Team Building at Scale

Grown and managed engineering organisations of 100+ people. Talent pipelines, hiring, performance frameworks, and creating environments where people do their best work.

Delivery Leadership

Full lifecycle ownership from concept to ship. Agile practices, sprint cadences, risk management, and milestone-driven delivery across multi-year, multi-studio programmes.

Cross-Functional Alignment

Bridging engineering, art, design, and product. Translating creative vision into executable plans and ensuring shared understanding across disciplines that often speak different languages.

Operating Model Design

Shaping how organisations work: ownership structures, process introduction, evolving technology groups into multidisciplinary platform teams, and service-oriented delivery models.

Technical Foundation

Career roots in programming. Deep understanding of game engines, toolchains, and the technical constraints that shape product decisions — which means conversations with engineers start from shared understanding, not translation.

Stakeholder & Partner Management

Building trust across studio leadership, publishers, and cross-studio collaborations. Translating between business requirements and technical reality without losing either.

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

Writing

In my own words

Writing publicly is new for me. During this career transition I've been experimenting with getting thoughts down and putting them out there — things I've learned over 30 years that I think could be useful to other people. Published on Substack.

Part 1 • Substack

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. This piece introduces the idea of building a personal knowledge system as the foundation for career resilience.

"If it isn't in the system, it doesn't exist."

Part 2 • Substack

Running my job search like a product system

Treats the job search as a product with a backlog, flow states, and an audit trail. Turns an overwhelming process into something manageable and repeatable.

"Backlogs, triage, flow states — the same thinking that ships games can run a career transition."

Part 3 • Substack

Using AI in a job search that already has a brain

How AI fits into a structured process as an accelerator, not a replacement for judgement. AI prepares the material for thinking; it does not do the thinking.

"If I read it out loud and feel like I'm auditioning for a corporate training video, something has gone wrong."

Standalone Essay • Coming Soon

It's Not About the Tool

Coming Soon...

How I Think

Principles, not platitudes

Tools are leverage on judgement, not substitutes for it.

This has been a constant through every wave: new engines, new methodologies, new project management platforms, and now AI. The teams that benefit most are the ones that already think clearly. The tools just help them carry it further, faster.

AI is a powerful amplifier. It collates, transforms, and surfaces patterns. But it can't define what "good" means for your team and shouldn't be trusted to make decisions. I use it to prepare material for thinking, not to replace the thinking itself.

In my own work, this shows up as a consistent preference: keep the thinking in a structure you own. Let tools sit on top as accelerators. If everything disappeared tomorrow, the clarity should remain.

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

What's Next

Currently open to conversations

Looking for senior leadership roles where building teams, shaping delivery, and bridging technical and creative disciplines is the work, not a side effect.

Let's talk

Engineering Manager. Senior Producer. Technical Program Manager. Delivery Manager. Consultancy. Based in Newcastle, open to remote and hybrid across the UK and EU.

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