A-Jay Nicolas, CSM
Engineering Program Manager at Caffeine
Engineering Program Manager at Caffeine
I'm passionate about education, efficiency, and engagement -- aka fun!
Caffeine
https://www.linkedin.com/company/caffeine.tv
• Drive and ship large and small multi-functional projects.
• Drive meaningful aspects of a project including scope, requirements, timelines, and prioritization.
• Own overall program schedules by presenting program milestones and updates to leadership, distilling key program information and highlighting risks.
• Develop standards, processes, and documentation to improve methodologies -- including reviews, awareness, education and process controls.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, Engineering, EPMs, QA and organizations both inside and outside the company to develop solutions for partnerships and other new business initiatives.
Redwood City, California, United States
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Engineering Program Manager
Lumos Labs (Lumosity)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/lumos-labs-lumosity-
After a company reorganization in March, I transformed my remaining teammates from a multi-team dept. of 20+ people into a smaller, Scrum-based, 10-person team. Within two months, we quickly shipped a new standalone app based on one of the most popular Lumosity games (Train of Thought).

We then took a Unity prototype for a Creativity app and iterated on it over the next six months, launching in Canada and developing successive features based on customer testing and feedback. This is the team I currently enjoy leading and managing!

For both projects, I led Daily Standups/Scrums, Sprint Plannings, Backlog Groomings, and Retrospectives on a weekly sprint cadence. By utilizing the Scrum ceremonies and my prior experience in education, I cultivated an environment for the team to learn from each other and safely make mistakes in pursuit of a healthy, productive, and inspired way of working.

Before receiving the title change of Technical Project Manager, I used the company's Learning and Development budget to become a CSM. I continued to exemplify and advocate for Agile/Scrum practices throughout the company, leading fellow teammates to pursue Scrum certification as both CSPOs and CSMs.

In addition to Scrum, I also led two Kanban-based teams! One team focused on improving our Games' delivery pipeline and consisted of cross-functional engineers from our iOS, Android, Games, and Platform teams. The other team ported our web games from Adobe Flash to WebGL in coordination with an external dev team and an outsourced testing provider.
San Francisco Bay Area
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Technical Project Manager
Lumos Labs (Lumosity)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/lumos-labs-lumosity-
• Write comprehensive test plans derived from specs, emails and conversations
• Manage tasks and testing scope for multiple testing projects
• Define a strategy for performance testing our mobile games
• Create and deliver quality metrics that drive and provide visibility on quality initiatives + game performance
• Mentor other QA on testing best practices
• Make recommendations to improve product reliability, performance, and quality assurance best practices and processes
• Research evolving test trends
• Develop an in‐depth understanding of the systems architecture and implementation they are working on
• Drive root cause analysis for defects and provide process improvement suggestions to eliminate future occurrences of similar defects
• Work closely with project management and games managers (product, engineering and art)
• Assist the QA team in testing for bi‐weekly mobile releases. When games QA work is light, assist in testing mobile app features
San Francisco, California
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Senior QA Engineer
Storm8
https://www.linkedin.com/company/storm8
• Content Game Designer for Farm Story 2; also contributed to Slots™, Restaurant Story, and Bakery Story
• Concepted the game’s highest-revenue event of 2016 -- Sept. Camping event
• Concepted 60-100 new 2D and 3D assets per month, per game, for three different games
• Wrote ≈10 quests, 10-25 items & descriptions, ≈3 promo dialogs, and a push notification per event

• Improved unit test and playtest conditions to reduce design-related fires by 80% year-over-year
• Built PHP tools for content creation; e.g. show item thumbs/attributes by name or list of IDs

• Helped transition the weekly content pipeline into a JIRA-based, Agile/Scrum workflow
- Team readied an event a week earlier than release after only one month under new workflow
Redwood City, CA
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Associate Game Designer
Storm8
https://www.linkedin.com/company/storm8
• Built automated tools in PHP for testing MySQL server-based content
- Check content for invalid attributes; e.g. error if item could sell for more than its cost
– Tool caught that exact bug in a live game — led to a fix before users exploited it
- Check names and description strings for length, warn if blank/null/possibly truncated
– Saved 4-6 hours of manual in-game localization testing per event

• Designed specs and test cases that led to automated testing of our cross promotion events
- Manual testing per event was reduced from 6-8 hours to 10-15 minutes

• Managed a team of three testers: delegated tasks, coached performance, set testing focus
• Trained new hires on testing weekly content, new features, and cross-promotion events
• Promoted knowledge-sharing by writing testing tutorials across Wiki and Confluence pages

• Performed manual testing on weekly content, new features, and cross-promotion events
• Used Xcode, Unity, Android Studio, ADB, and in-house server logs to facilitate testing

• Migrated existing test plans and cases from Google Sheets/Docs into JIRA/TestRail
Redwood City, CA
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Lead QA Tester
Storm8
https://www.linkedin.com/company/storm8
• Provided game feature and/or development tool testing
• Verified and ad-hoc tested newly implemented content and features
• Tracked defects within proper pipelines
• Thoroughly researched which product introduced a defect
• Assisted with prioritizing bug fixing efforts
• Managed bug databases (Wrike/JIRA)
• Managed test case databases (Google Sheets/TestRail)
• Created new test cases for implemented features
• Kept existing test cases up-to-date when software changes were made
• Provided feedback on the effectiveness/efficiency of team processes
• Checked out builds using SVN, then compiled/pushed to devices using Xcode/Android SDK
Redwood City, CA
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QA Tester
Konami Digital Entertainment
https://www.linkedin.com/company/konami
Titles: DDR Ultramix 2, DDR Universe 2 & 3, DDR SuperNova, and DDR: Disney Channel Edition

• Designed step charts for over 40 songs, with five difficulty levels per song
• Collaborated with a team of four other designers to unify difficulty standards and design rules 
• Delivered step data content on a bi-weekly schedule while working both in-office and at home
Redwood City, CA
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Step Data Creator
Konami Digital Entertainment
https://www.linkedin.com/company/konami
Titles: TMNT 1989, Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol 

• Distributed daily testing tasks to a team of 2–8 testers over a four month production cycle 
• Corresponded with project leads and international production teams (Japan, UK) 
• Presented weekly team progress reports for QA project managers and project leads
• Managed a web-based database of ≈1000 bugs for instructional clarity and submission quality
Redwood City, CA
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Lead Quality Assurance Tester
Konami Digital Entertainment
https://www.linkedin.com/company/konami
Titles: King Arthur, DDR Ultramix 2, Karaoke Revolution Party, Xiaolin Showdown, Super Contra, Karaoke Revolution Presents: American Idol Encore 

• Tested single-player gameplay, live & networked multiplayer gameplay, downloadable content, hardware peripherals, and Sony/Microsoft submission compliance for PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360
• Found a technical requirement bug before submitting — saved thousands in submission costs
Redwood City, CA
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Quality Assurance Tester
B.M. Music Education, minor in Humanities, Single Subject Teaching Credential
Education
https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C560BAQHgk30KnIPwxQ/company-logo_100_100/0/1623424377219?e=1655942400&v=beta&t=Cuc9dTv2RYE2Z08a61rRzyjkANmkf7yycAYd4VZ2mQ8
San Jose State University
https://www.linkedin.com/school/san-jose-state-university/
SJSU Chamber Singers
Tenor Section Leader, First Tenor
SJSU Concert Choir
Tenor Section Leader, First Tenor
Akbayan Filipino-American Organization of SJSU
Co-PCN Director, Co-Cultural Chair, Choir Director, Internship Coordinator
SJSU Choraliers
Sheet Music Librarian, Tenor
Undergraduates who have achieved a high cumulative grade point average in all university and college work, and a high cumulative grade point average in all work undertaken at SJSU, may be awarded university honors at graduation at the following levels:

3.50 - 3.69 Cum Laude 
3.70 - 3.84 Magna Cum Laude 
3.85 - 4.00 Summa Cum Laude
San José State University
Magna Cum Laude
Undergraduate students who have earned a 3.65 or higher grade point average at San José State University in at least two contiguous semesters of the three semesters prior to the Honors Convocation.
San José State University
Dean's Scholar (6 times)
Scrum Alliance
bcert.me
1011356
Certified Scrum Master
http://bcert.me/suztbajoc