Brian Lockhart

11410 NE 124th St. #512

Kirkland, WA 98034-4305

425.442.1325

brian@brianlockhart.com

 

PROFILE:

I’m a proven program manager and team leader in the internet technology and video game industries, with 15+ years of experience shipping and running world-leading, industry changing products and services on time and under budget.  I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to leverage my passion for technology and entertainment into a challenging and rewarding career.  I thrive on being part of a team that has strong passion for what we’re working on and is focused on bringing excellent experiences to our customers in the marketplace.

Specialties: product, program and project management, videogame production, enterprise-scale web service management, big data modeling / analytics and management, server / datacenter / network operations, PCI & customer billing systems.

 

 EXPERIENCE: 

Senior Program Manager / Producer

Microsoft Game Studios, Core Publishing Group

2012 – Present

·           Relationship management and project management of published game with 3rd party developer (Microsoft confidential / product not yet publicly announced).

·           Coordination with other internal game publishing teams + Xbox platform & service teams for unannounced Microsoft confidential future product releases.

Senior Program Manager

Microsoft Technical Computing Group

2011 – 2012

·           Live service product management and operations coordination across Windows HPC Server, Parallel Computing, and Workbench Computing teams.

·           Program management of confidential / unreleased product focused on large scale analytics and modeling.

·           Worked with Microsoft’s Business Platform Division (SQL) on several internal Big Data & Modeling initiatives – project was cancelled late 2011.

Group Program Manager / Executive Producer

Microsoft Game Studios, Turn 10 Studios

2009 – 2011

·           Management of team of producers tasked across all studio projects – Forza Motorsport 4 + other Microsoft confidential / not yet publicly announced titles.

·           Collaboration with other Microsoft teams to produce a prototype controller-free game demo using Xbox Kinect and Forza Motorsport for the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo.

·           Work with studio senior management team to define new staff team structure that enables the studio to work on multiple simultaneous game development projects.

Senior Lead Program Manager / Producer

Microsoft Game Studios, Turn 10 Studios

2007 – 2009

·           Managed team of producers responsible for the development, production and release of Forza Motorsport 3 for the Xbox 360 gaming console.  Forza 3 is a 92 rated AAA title with 2MM+ units sold worldwide.

·           Managed game asset production content pipeline for studio, including stabilization redesign of build and test systems to allow the studio to scale and grow from single title to multiple concurrent title development efforts.

·           Managed core game engine development team.  Prioritized feature development backlog and artist support efforts.

·           Helped drive studio adoption of Agile software development methodology (SCRUM).

Lead Program Manager

Microsoft – Xbox Live

2002 – 2007

·         Managed PM team responsible for operating the Xbox Live online gaming entertainment service and the Xbox.com website.  Xbox Live is now used by 25MM+ subscribers worldwide.

·         Worked on all versions of Xbox Live including beta, launch, and business critical releases such as the Halo2, Xbox360, Live Video Marketplace, and Zune launches.  Worked closely with design, development, and test teams to ensure we released efficient, scalable, manageable service components.

·         Operational ownership of the account creation and billing provisioning systems for Xbox Live.  Managed operations relationship with internal Microsoft billing team, and represented Xbox during annual companywide external banking industry PCI security audits conducted by VISA / Mastercard.

·         Managed Xbox console genealogy system, responsible for hardware-level network client authentication and antipiracy controls.

·         Drove launch and operation of Xbox Live Video and Zune Marketplace, which enables digital video and music content distribution through the Xbox Live billing and provisioning systems.

·         Responsible for SQL data migration during major platform release / schema change for Xbox -> Xbox360 launch.  Migrated user data for 10m+ accounts while changing datacenters, with minimum downtime and zero data loss. 

Lead Program Manager

Microsoft – MSN.COM

1999 – 2002

·         Managed the PM team responsible for standardizing, deploying and managing MSN’s server software platform.  Worked with individual MSN site teams to gather requirements for base OS, IIS and SQL configurations, then drove regular versioned global releases of preconfigured server installation binaries.  Provided Tier 3 issue escalation for Server Software Platform.  Work with PM, Engineering and Test teams to troubleshoot performance / reliability issues, security breaches, etc. 

·         Designed, deployed, and administered MSN.COM’s worldwide server domain infrastructure, including migration from NT4 / legacy domain model to Windows2000 Active Directory model.

·         Responsible for enterprise-wide Internet property monitoring for the various MSN websites.  My team designed and developed a new monitoring application and the underlying systems which support it.  The system monitors and sends issue notifications for over 70 separate server clusters, which are running on a variety of platforms in Microsoft datacenters worldwide. 

Senior Systems Engineer

Microsoft – MSNBC.COM

1998 – 1999

·           Lead systems engineer for MSNBC.COM, managed engineering team responsible for overall site uptime and functionality.

·           Worked with Editorial and Operations teams to improve publishing processes and redesign the server farm to improve site capacity and page rendering performance.

·           Created custom site monitoring and management system, which provided application and site performance monitoring for MSNBC.COM as well as remote server and cluster management.

·           Drove major platform hotfix issues to completion with key groups within Microsoft: Windows, IIS, SQL

Production Supervisor

Microsoft – Finance

1997 - 1998

·         Worked with the MS-Sales Worldwide Financial Channel Measurement Data System.  This is Microsoft’s internal financial reporting system which encompasses over 30 revenue datasources in 17 countries.  My team was responsible for 24x7 analyst coverage interacting with other teams in Europe, Japan, Ireland, Australia and the Far East.

·         Managed team of SQL Server 6.5 System Administrators and NT 4.0 / Windows2000 Domain Administrators for worldwide corporate LAN / WAN, managing multiple SQL Servers and NT Servers across multiple domains.  At the time, MS-Sales was the largest SQL database system running at Microsoft, and the 2nd largest SQL deployment in the world.

IT Director

State of Nevada – District Court

1995 - 1997

·         Responsible for all IT and network operations of the Court, directly serving 120 users in 5 locations.  My team was responsible for all aspects of the department including budgeting, network administration, coordination with other County agencies, and development planning.

·         Implemented NT based TCP/IP network with Windows95 client PCs consisting of 6 servers in a multiple master domain model, integrated with the County’s existing Unix based enterprise network.

·         Ported legacy COBOL case management software system from Data General mainframe to Sun UNIX platform.

·         Designed and developed the Court’s website for both Intranet and Internet users.  The website serves as an Intranet common link for exchanging case information between the various State of Nevada criminal justice agencies (Courts, District Attorney, Public Defender, Sheriff) and for public Internet access searching of case information via a secure database.

  

EDUCATION / AWARDS:

·         Bachelor of Science, Business Administration.  Dual Major: Computer Information Systems / Finance  GPA: 3.6  University of Nevada-Reno, May 1992

·         Second place - 1992 National Intercollegiate Stock Market Investing Competition.

·         Emmy Award winner – 2005 National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences - Emmy for Development of Multiplayer Console Technology, Xbox Live online entertainment service.