Michael Smith

Founder & Software Engineer

Myrkwood Studios

Kirkland, WA

• Founded an independent software studio and am preparing its first commercial product, Ironbreak Arena, for release on Steam and Android.
• Architected an authoritative Node.js/WebSocket multiplayer platform supporting real-time movement, combat, game modes, bots, persistence, player profiles, and server discovery.
• Built cross-platform browser, desktop/Steam, and Android clients with keyboard/mouse, controller, and touch input.
• Implemented authentication, platform integrations, persistence, deployment infrastructure, release tooling, and Steam/Google Play distribution workflows.
• Own the product end-to-end from architecture and implementation through testing, deployment, storefront integration, and commercial launch preparation.

Software Engineer II

Microsoft

Redmond, WA

• Worked on a real-time voice AI for Facilitator in Teams that let users interact by voice and invoke tools as if speaking with a virtual teammate.
• Implemented server-side and client-side service-integration components for the AI tool-calling system, enabling skills to retrieve data from Microsoft systems.
• Built the application authentication layer that allowed the bot to communicate securely with connected services.
• Built the human-in-the-loop approval flow for skills requiring user permission before execution, including integration with existing Microsoft systems.
• Served as the primary engineer responsible for Responsible AI compliance for the system.
• Built and iterated on an evaluation framework executing 1,000+ safety tests to validate releases, support compliance requirements, and complete the Responsible AI approval process for internal and private previews.
• Developed evaluation coverage spanning personal harms, hallucination and grounding quality, jailbreak attempts, prompt injection, and tool misuse scenarios.
• Contributed across Android, iOS, AI systems, Teams client surfaces, and backend services; used the macOS terminal for builds, scripting, and GitHub Copilot CLI during visionOS and iOS Teams development.
• Extended SQL Server stored procedures to support new features in Microsoft billing systems.
• Previously contributed across Teams, Mesh, and SharePoint Spaces on collaboration features, developer tooling, build automation, and cross-system integration.

Senior Software Engineer

Affirma Consulting

Bellevue, WA

• Served as a development lead for custom software projects.
• Designed technical solutions, assigned work, mentored junior developers, and provided delivery estimates for sales and project planning.
• Addressed SQL Server performance issues by analyzing databases, adding indexes to high-traffic tables, and writing stored procedures.

Software Development Consultant

Microsoft

Seattle, WA

• Provided technical leadership and software engineering on custom application work for Fortune 500 companies.
• Delivered solutions in close partnership with Microsoft stakeholders and enterprise customers.

Software Engineering Intern

Systems & Software

Williston, VT

• Added features to the web front end of customer-facing utilities software.

IT Associate & Developer

Vermont Technical College

• Built and maintained an internal IT ticket tracking server, website, and MySQL databases.
• Administered CentOS Linux servers and MySQL databases remotely over SSH, applying SQL scripts for database updates and schema changes.