Featured Work

VR Surgical Training

As a Senior Unity Developer at Osso VR, I contributed to over a dozen training modules for clients including J&J, Stryker, and Smith+Nephew, developed in Unity for Quest 2 headsets, as well as tooling for internal MedTechs. My role was primarily on internal tooling and support, and acting as a bridge between MedTech, Product, and Engineering teams. I was most often the one called in to bring at-risk projects over the finish line.

The Role

This role drew on my technical expertise, time management, and mentorship abilities all at once. Officially I was the go-to for technical guidance on a team of ~7 Med Tech, though as senior that often meant jumping across teams to projects with the greatest challenges. This meant regularly familiarizing myself with new projects to troubleshoot on short notice, and becoming intimately familiar with all parts of the product itself to provide effective guidance.

Product Development

This support directly drove my technical work. Pain points were turned into new feature requests, internal tooling ideas, or bug fixes. Wherever possible, I owned these end to end. Presenting the idea to product for approval, doing the development work, getting testing and feedback from MedTech who it applied to, and getting the PR approved and merged. This meant being able to roll out critical new tools and features while projects were in-flight, to get them over the finish line.

I became a resident expert on multiplayer system troubleshooting, spline setup and tooling, and performance improvement. My multiplayer expertise developed from asking "What is the thing no one likes working on" soon after starting, and then taking on those tasks. Seeking out the greatest pain points first often leads to the greatest rewards.

Splines

Spline tooling in particular saved weeks of time and tons of pain. Many later projects required the use of flexible instruments - procedures involving suturing, endoscopes, or catheters for cardiac procedures. A list that only grew with time. All of these required configuring complex spline paths, movements along those paths to specific points, and animations of those paths to specific positions. Precision was key, as these were training tools for real surgical procedures, and thus needed to be accurate.

Cardiac Procedures

As a specific spline example, during heart valve replacement procedures, a catheter must be fed through a major artery, into the heart, to a specific position. This means tools must be positioned correctly down to the centimeter, move realistically inside a beating heart, and accurately match the landmarks that surgeons would use in a real procedure. This in some cases meant over 100 distinct paths and positions on those paths.

I developed numerous tooling improvements to make this process easier, and in more than one case, MedTech attested that the project could not have been completed on any reasonable timeline without them.

Pipeline Tools

Other tooling included Unity-specific fixes. In one case, we frequently had issues where MedTech would work with an early version of a 3D model, but the final delivered version would have a slight hierarchy change. This would then blow away all components added to the original object, and all scene references, causing huge headaches re-setting up the model.

The data for what component is assigned still existed within the scene file, but Unity could not match the internal IDs to the new hierarchy. So, I developed a tool to match an old FBX hierarchy to a new one, replace the approriate IDs, and restore all of the components and scene references with a button click.

Team Mentorship

Mentorship was a huge part of the role as well. I drew on my experience leading teams at Primal Screen, as well as my teaching experience, to not only fix issues, but teach MedTech how to work with our product more effectively. I routinely ran hands on support and training sessions, whether during scheduled office hours, or late at night on a weekend to meet a deadline. This led them to be able to take on more complex work and complete projects faster. Not to mention the emotional support of working through tough problems together when pressure and deadlines are highest. It was often joked that therapy and emotional support were a major part of my role.

Mission Based Work

I am extremely proud of the work I did during this time, despite leaving to pursue other growth opportunities. Both challenging and impactful, the two areas I value most in my work.