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Emily S. Burch

Davenport, FL · (860) 605-8991
burch.emilys@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/esburch · github.com/esburch

Summary

Software architect and senior technical contributor with 13+ years designing high-performance, resilient systems and building CI/CD infrastructure for large-scale platforms. Specializing in game and interactive experience delivery at Lucasfilm and ILM, with deep expertise in Unreal Engine build pipelines and cross-platform release to Sony, Meta, and Steam. Built systems from scratch that remain in production, drove 80% reductions in licensing costs, and shipped 10 consumer experiences.

Work Experience

Senior Staff Software Engineer

Lucasfilm
  • Design and own cross-platform build and release pipelines spanning console (PlayStation), PC (SteamVR), and mobile VR (Meta Quest, Apple Vision Pro), shipping 10+ consumer experiences
  • Architected and built end-to-end build and release system from scratch for interactive games and experiences, with a focus on performance, reliability, and scalability; system remains in production and continues to serve as the foundation for all releases across 3 concurrent development titles
  • Reduced build licensing requirements by ~80% through workflow optimization across TeamCity and Perforce-based CI/CD pipelines
  • Own and operate build and release infrastructure for the Advanced Development Group, supporting 40 engineers across 3 concurrent development titles; coordinate with art, design, and production teams across multiple time zones to align release schedules and manage risk
  • Mentor engineers supporting build and release operations; establish coding standards, lead design and code reviews, and maintain architectural documentation for all build and release systems
  • Develop and maintain internal tooling to support Unreal Engine-based game development workflows, including engine plugins, Unreal Build Tool and Automation Tool extensions, and platform SDK integrations for Sony, Meta, and Steam
  • Design platform-specific release workflows and enforce software security and configuration control standards for Sony PlayStation and Meta Quest publishing pipelines
  • Optimized static lighting and rendering pipeline, reducing build iteration time and cloud compute cost

DevOps Engineer

03/2015–11/2017
ESPN
  • Deployed feed ingest system using Kafka, ZooKeeper, and Java microservices, achieving zero outages since 2015 inception
  • Coordinated zero-downtime migration of all production Kafka microservices from physical servers to virtual machines
  • Orchestrated and maintained server configuration for 100+ servers using Chef and CloudFormation
  • Administered suite of AWS services across multiple accounts and regions (Lambda, EC2, S3, RDS, EMR, CloudFormation, Route53, SNS, SQS, VPC, IAM, ECR, DataPipeline, CLI)
  • Consolidated alerting across Splunk, New Relic, and CloudWatch into unified monitoring for AWS and on-premises environments
  • Developed monitoring scripts for feed ingest platform using TICK stack (Telegraf, InfluxDB, Chronograf, Kapacitor) and Grafana dashboards

DevOps Engineer

07/2012–03/2015
Cigna
  • Collaborated on automated Informatica deployments resulting in estimated $140,000/year in operational savings
  • Introduced database change management using LiquiBase across 6 projects, standardizing release processes across teams
  • Managed code and content deployments across 25+ environments for three projects to WebSphere and Apache
  • Supported creation of new DevOps team in Information Management to own ETL project deployments
  • Presented DevOps principles and industry best practices to engineering teams across Cigna
  • Trained new team members on open-source and enterprise software development tools

Skills

Architecture & Middleware middleware and SDK development, software architecture
CI/CD & Build Systems TeamCity, Jenkins, Artifactory, Maven, Chef, Test Kitchen, CI/CD
Game Development Unreal Engine, Perforce, platform publishing and certification (PSVR, Meta Quest, SteamVR, Apple Vision Pro, Steam)
Containers Docker (Linux and Windows)
Cloud & Infrastructure AWS (EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, EMR, CloudFormation, Route53, SNS, SQS, VPC, IAM, ECR, DataPipeline, CLI), hybrid on-prem/cloud
Messaging & Data Kafka, ZooKeeper
Monitoring & Observability Grafana, Telegraf, InfluxDB, Kapacitor, Prometheus, New Relic, Splunk, CloudWatch
Languages & Scripting Python, Bash, Ruby, Java, JavaScript/Node.js, C/C++
Version Control & Collaboration Perforce, GitHub, JIRA, Confluence
Operating Systems CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Windows Server

Education

BS in Management Information Systems

05/2012
Central Connecticut State University · New Britain, CT