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I'm Drew — a software engineer in Austin, TX. I build AI systems that a whole company uses every day, end to end: architecture, model and data integration, evaluation, deployment, and the operations work that keeps them trustworthy. I've been shipping games in Unity and C# for 13+ years, and I host Nintendrew, a game history channel with 350,000+ subscribers.
These days I'm a senior software engineer on contract with a frontier AI lab. Before that, as Senior Software Engineer II, Applied AI at Pocket Worlds, the studio behind the mobile social MMO Highrise (where I still support the platforms as a contractor), I designed and solely built the two AI platforms the company now runs on: a source-grounded, agentic company assistant with 140+ tools that cites its sources and holds every write to the live game behind human approval, and an in-house generative art suite that trains Highrise's visual style into custom image-edit LoRAs instead of prompting for it. In blind side-by-side votes, the art team picked it over the vendor tool it replaces on 4 of 5 production tools.
My working method is agentic development: I run coding agents in parallel and spend my own time on decomposition, review, and verification. That's how one engineer shipped a production assistant, a model training and evaluation pipeline, an agent that builds internal apps for non-engineers, and autonomous agent experiments in under a year, mostly in stacks I hadn't used before.
On the games side: I co-created and shipped C.A.R.L. to PC and every major console, led development on Draw a Stickman: EPIC 2, and led engineering on Highrise's weekly live-service events. Off the clock, I've spent a decade making Nintendrew the internet's home for retro gaming deep dives, which taught me to explain technical ideas plainly. I also compose, edit, and do voiceover!
Austin, TX. Two cats. One very complete N64 library. Make yourself at home — the guestbook is at the bottom.
A retro game hunting app. Point your phone at a cartridge, disc, or box and it identifies the exact release, down to region and edition, then prices it from recent sold listings. Behind it: a catalog of 80,000+ releases across 98 consoles in NA, PAL, and JP, plus a collecting layer with a dex to complete, quests, a map of game stores and swap meets, and trading between collectors. Launching soon.
▶ Get notified at launchA source-grounded, agentic assistant Pocket Worlds uses every day across LiveOps, support, data, art, and leadership. 140+ tools over the data warehouse, Slack, Notion, GitHub, support tickets, Discord, Figma, and the game's admin systems. Every answer cited, every write to the live game human-approved. Runs scheduled reports and a weekly company digest, and serves other agents through an API and MCP. Python, FastAPI, Postgres, Claude on AWS Bedrock, 1,300+ tests.
📄 Read the thesis →An in-house replacement for a third-party AI art vendor. Instead of prompting for Highrise's visual style, it trains the style into custom image-edit LoRAs on curated in-house datasets. In blind side-by-side evaluations judged by the art team, it won the final round 65/35 and beat the vendor on 4 of 5 production tools. 40+ users, 2,000+ generations a week, plus an API and MCP server so other agents can generate on-style art.
A self-serve app builder on Anthropic's Managed Agents: non-engineers describe an admin panel tool in plain language and get it built, tested against recorded data, and deployed. An autonomous loop that scouts trends, then builds, tests, and publishes game worlds (its first ones shipped to the live game). A Unity agent that reproduces client bugs and opens draft PRs with before/after proof. Plus React micro-apps that automate LiveOps chores.
Led engineering for the weekly live-service events in Highrise, Pocket Worlds' mobile social MMO, and built HR Stream, an in-game platform for host-run live Bingo and Trivia. Mentored the Worlds team and set its AI-assisted development practice.
A surreal web game about surviving an avalanche of popups — mini-games, scam chats, a stock ticker, and a virtual pet, all living inside the windows attacking you. The (much politer) popup engine haunting this very site is its licensed descendant.
▶ Play in browserRetro-style platformer built with Matt Bitner, in the lineage of Cave Story and Jazz Jackrabbit. I built the core gameplay mechanics, wrote the dialogue, composed the soundtrack, and drew the pixel art and promotional graphics. Steam, Switch, PlayStation, Xbox.
Led development of the draw-your-own-hero sequel. C#/Unity, shipped across desktop and mobile, later ported to Switch.
Real-time strategy with heavily armed caterpillars — one of two gameplay engineers. iOS, Android, and Steam.
Core gameplay engineering on the original. Tens of millions of downloads across six platforms.
Earlier credits published under Andrew Kenady — full list on MobyGames.
Since 2016 I've hosted Nintendrew, a YouTube channel dedicated to video game history and preservation — obscure prototypes, ambitious homebrew, console mods, and the hardware everyone else forgot.
Practically, that's a decade of scripting, shooting, editing, scoring, and publishing broadcast-quality video on a schedule, plus the audience instincts that come from a comment section 350,000 strong. Frequent collaborations with Scott the Woz, Nathaniel Bandy, SMG4, and SimpleFlips.
For a studio, that means a developer who can also speak publicly, demo convincingly, and represent the product — conventions included. I'm a recurring guest at Retropalooza, OMG!Con, and Really Rad Weekend, and the channel is listed on IMDb.
Details under NDA.
Full-time through October 2026, continuing as a contractor supporting the AI platforms below.
Sole architect, developer, and operator of the company's two main internal AI platforms, and of the agentic engineering practice behind them.
Writing, filming, scoring, and editing for a 350,000+ subscriber YouTube channel — reviews, retrospectives, DIY builds, and retro collecting, produced solo since 2016.
Co-created and shipped C.A.R.L., a 2D puzzle-platformer released on PC, Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation. As one of a two-person team, I built the core gameplay mechanics in Unity/C#, handled cross-platform build pipelines and deployment, wrote the dialogue, composed the soundtrack, and drew the pixel art and promotional graphics.
Owned the code base and build management end-to-end; developed rapid prototypes for Karobi, an unreleased AR card battle game.
Built and iterated on multiple simultaneously-developed Unity titles for an unannounced project in a closed-door R&D lab.
Core gameplay engineering, then small-team leadership, across Draw a Stickman: EPIC 1 & 2 and Battlepillars, plus licensed AR experiences for Disney and Sony — C# with XNA and Unity, shipping to Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
WKU Game Research Group. Entered via The Gatton Academy of Mathematics and Science — the nation's #1-ranked high school (Newsweek) — where I later returned as a computer science tutor.
Original composition and scoring, chiptune to full production. Game soundtracks a specialty.
Listen →Character and commercial VO. Credits include announcer work for SMG4. Reels on request.
Request reels →Convention panels, guest spots, and developer talks. Comfortable on any stage. Con bookings go through my representation.
Book me via Malice Media →I'm open to what's next. I'm most interested in applied AI, agent infrastructure, evaluation, and AI-native tooling for creative and game teams. Contract work, collaborations, or an interesting problem — if the work is meaningful and the craft matters, I want to hear about it. I answer everything personally, usually fast. For convention and event bookings, contact Malice Media.
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