top of page

Hello There!

My name is John Gunnar Headley, but I go by Gunnar. I am a Software Engineer working at Amazon on the GameSparks team.  Originally from Southern Maryland, I moved to Washington State to attend DigiPen and have since taken up a job at Amazon.  Since moving to Washington in late 2015, I have learned a lot about Game Design and Computer Science and am happy with my personal progress.  My goals now are to follow my passion for consumer product development wherever it takes me.

20914469_1391554120941278_33146882371151

Professional Experience

amazon-png-logo-vector-1.png

Since April of 2019, I have been lucky enough to be a Software Engineer at Amazon. I started out working on the Alexa News team and transitioned to the GameSparks team in September of 2019. While on the Alexa News team, I worked on the backend system for processing all news that eventually flows to customer Alexas. My personal project was to enable a new news provider for the What's Happening with X feature. I also learned about how to keep a live service running, which includes tracking down customer latency spikes and finding their root causes. 

Since joining the GameSparks team, I have taken on more responsibility as a team member. One of my favorite tasks was preparing and performing a demo of our product to the VP of our org.  I have also gotten the privilege of being an intern mentor, helping their growth through their projects.  What I enjoy doing most is making engaging experiences for customers, help new members grow accustomed to our environment, and make the team environment fun and productive. 

 

During project development, I was tasked to redesign and implement a major feature of our product. I spent a week talking with more senior developers for guidance and created a design document. The document had multiple solution options, pros and cons, and gave an explanation on what the problem is and why it needs to be solved. The team agreed the main option and I then mocked up a list of tasks to get the project complete. The project is now completed and has had drastic improvements since the last iteration.

Gunnar Headley Magic Leap

During the summer of 2018, I was lucky enough to land an Internship at AR tech company, Magic Leap. My role was a Test Engineer on the SDK, which entailed creating and maintaining tests for Unreal Engine. Towards the latter half of the summer, I got a chance to help develop tests for ML's proprietary engine, Lumin Runtime. I was put on a small team of engineers to build tests quickly as the deadline for shipping was coming up soon. I was also around to watch the shipping of the company's first product, the Magic Leap One.

bottom of page