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Viktor Grigorev

Unity Tech Lead - Multiplayer, Rendering Performance, Real-Time Physics

Murla (Alicante), Spain. Remote since 2020, CET. English C1, Russian native.

Summary

Tech lead, 10+ years in C# and Unity, cross-functional teams of up to 10, two development teams built from scratch, named inventor on two patents. At Alice Games: Unity architecture, the host-authoritative multiplayer client and rendering on Vacation Cafe Simulator, a 4-player PC title released on Steam 20 August 2026, Very Positive with 700+ reviews, demo #26 of 3,400+ at Steam Next Fest. Before that, seven years at Vizex, from middle Unity developer on city-scale digital twins to R&D tech lead of its physics simulation platform, 2.8M+ users on PC, iOS, Android and WebGL, with custom solvers on PhysX and a patented real-time electrodynamics engine matched to real-world measurements.

Core stack

  • Programming and Architecture: C#, .NET, Unity, Application Architecture, Data-Oriented Design and Multithreading (Burst, Job System), Dependency Injection (Zenject, VContainer), Roslyn Source Generators, Addressables and Runtime Asset Loading.
  • Real-Time Graphics and Performance: URP/HDRP, HLSL Shader Authoring and Variant Stripping, Shader Graph, Custom Render Features and Post-Processing, CPU and GPU Optimization (SRP Batcher, GPU Instancing, LODs), Profiling and Debugging (Unity Profiler, Frame Debugger, Memory Profiler, RenderDoc, Xcode), Cross-Platform Delivery (Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, WebGL).
  • Multiplayer and Networking: Netcode for GameObjects (Host-Authoritative, Ownership, Late-Join), UGS Relay, Lobby and Auth, Steam Datagram Relay, Steamworks SDK.
  • Physics, Geometry and Tooling: Real-Time Physics and Custom Solvers, Data-Oriented Mesh Frameworks (N-Gon, Attributes), Mesh Booleans, Computational Geometry, GIS Vector-to-Mesh and City-Scale Digital Twins, Custom Unity Editor Tooling, NavMesh / NPC AI and State Machines, REST APIs and WebSockets, CI/CD Pipelines (GitLab CI, Jenkins, TeamCity).
  • AI-Assisted Development: Claude Code Agent Workflows, Unity CLI Automation, Generative Asset Pipelines (ComfyUI, Gradio).
  • 3D Content and DCC: 3ds Max, Blender, Houdini, Houdini Digital Assets in Unity, Python Tooling (Houdini, ComfyUI, Gradio).

Experience

Unity Tech Lead, Alice Games

July 2024 - now. Remote. PC games on Steam. Vacation Cafe Simulator on Steam

  • Vacation Cafe Simulator: 4-player multiplayer, released on Steam 20 August 2026, Very Positive with 700+ reviews, Steam Deck Playable. The demo placed #26 of 3,400+ at Steam Next Fest.
  • Own rendering and the frame budget - HDRP custom shaders, lighting, Volumes and post-processing, runtime procedural mesh generation. A profiling-driven refactor took worst-case frame spikes from over 30 ms to 11-12 ms, inside the 16.6 ms budget: batched network updates to cut RPC volume, culling, LODs, Addressables for asset loading, and the removal of managed-allocation spikes.
  • Own Unity architecture and technical direction in a cross-functional team of about 10 with 3-4 engineers - system boundaries across gameplay, networking and rendering.
  • Own multiplayer on a host-authoritative model - Netcode for GameObjects over UGS Relay and Steam Datagram Relay, UGS Lobby and Auth, Steamworks SDK - state synchronization, ownership and late-join in production, save and load of networked world state, transactional inventory and progression. Fixed bugs in Netcode for GameObjects itself and rewrote the Steam transport implementation under it to fragment and reassemble large messages.
  • Built the core gameplay and progression systems - inventory with validation, pre-calculation and transactions, character states, save/load, quests, leveling, events, economy, open world and in-game transport - and the modular mini-game framework (state flow, sessions, scoring, content hooks) that design uses to add content without engineering.
  • Built the character controller, NPC AI with navigation and state machines, input handling across gameplay modes, and the async scene loading and transition pipelines.
  • Set the engineering standards for the team - Editor-time validation tooling that artists and level designers run to catch asset and data regressions before CI, code generation, test coverage on critical paths, CI/CD on Jenkins and GitLab pipelines.
  • Designed the generative-AI asset pipelines for 2D/3D content (ComfyUI with custom nodes, Gradio API integrations) and an internal Gemma 3 translation plugin for content and localization. Day-to-day work runs in an AI-assisted setup: Claude Code agent workflows for generation, refactoring and review, Unity CLI automation for scenes, prefabs, tests and builds.

R&D Tech Lead, Vizex-Info

January 2019 - March 2024. Moscow, remote from 2020. EdTech, real-time physics simulation. VR-Labs, virtual laboratories for schools (screen-based)

  • Started the R&D line with a three-month electrodynamics demo. It became the company's flagship platform, serving 2.8M+ users on PC, iOS, Android and WebGL. Promoted to Team Lead, led cross-functional teams of up to 10, technical lead or team lead on about 10 of the 20+ laboratories.
  • Held 4K inside a 33 ms frame budget in WebGL on a 7th-gen Core i3 with integrated graphics, and under 16.6 ms on iPads and laptops - CPU, GPU and memory profiling, lower memory use and runtime asset loading, a migration from the Built-in pipeline to URP with custom render features, custom shaders and procedural mesh generation.
  • Built custom physics on top of PhysX - impulse-transfer solvers for hydrostatics and pistons, buoyancy stabilized for extreme density ratios, arbitrary rope and pulley constraint systems, communicating vessels with multi-density liquids and pressure gradients.
  • Built a patented real-time electrodynamics engine, the first project of the line, matched to real-world measurements.
  • Built the 2D drafting editor (vector editor with raster-like UX, SDF-based vector rendering, curve and segment intersections) and the 3D modeling editor (Bezier curves, kinematic extrusion and contour following, Boolean operations on an attribute mesh with smoothing groups).
  • Restructured the shared platform architecture under the individual laboratories on Burst, the Job System, Zenject and UniTask. Introduced Roslyn source generators that cut boilerplate and lowered the defect rate by about 25%. Built the in-house input and event-routing plugin used across the platform.
  • Joined Surrounding World, an elementary-school title with more content than its schedule allowed (dialogs, 3D models, logic branches, mini-games), to rescue it, re-scoped it around its core features and delivered it on time. Consulted the logic-circuits and robotics team on PhysX, URP, Input System and Shader Graph.
  • Built the client-server and persistence components over REST APIs and WebSockets, and carried the legacy subsystems through Unity and platform upgrades.

Unity Software Developer, Vizex-Info

December 2016 - January 2019. Moscow. Map (GIS) data, 3D digital twins, big data.

  • Brought Skia in through SkiaSharp as the tile rasterizer, rendering vector tiles into textures, and moved map rendering from raster to vector tiles, cutting bandwidth for 3D building visualization.
  • Built the GIS vector-to-mesh tool behind city-scale 3D digital twins of a city healthcare network and of municipal utility infrastructure, streaming gigabytes of source data from backend services to Windows, Linux, iPad and Android clients.
  • Cache validation and versioning, tile-based data storage optimization and a Unity mapping service for geolocation-based KPI visualization. Co-developed iDVP, a tool that lets users build their own dashboard widgets over data marts, with the analytics and backend teams.
  • Client-server communication and data pipelines over REST and WebSockets. Migrated existing desktop products to Unity for cross-platform delivery.

Unity Software Developer, Toonidee Production

February 2016 - December 2016. Moscow. Kids games, AR, animation tie-ins.

  • Shipped camera-driven AR magazines and coloring books on Unity and Vuforia, three releases in under a year (Super Rescuer, Super Rescuer 2, Paperworks), tie-ins to Paper Tales and Be-Be-Bears, plus ports of existing products to Unity for iOS and Android.
  • Built the tracker system that recognizes and reconstructs a child's coloring from the intact reference regions when the drawing goes outside the lines, plus the color recognition algorithm and real-time recoloring of 3D objects from camera input.

3D Visualizer, Art Project

December 2011 - February 2014. Moscow.

  • Interior and architectural visualization while at university - modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering in 3ds Max and V-Ray, MaxScript automation for rigs and modeling workflows.

Personal projects

Sangria - node-based procedural modeling and runtime mesh generation for Unity. 2026 - now. Public dev log. In-engine, Houdini-inspired operator graph over a geometry model with n-gons as first-class primitives, mesh Booleans with Seam, Trim and Shatter on top, and geometry processing on Burst with no managed allocation. Async graph execution off the main thread, expression nodes on a Roslyn source generator, convex decomposition for colliders, and graphs built from a natural-language prompt through Unity CLI and Claude Code.

Experimenters - a virtual electricity lab in the browser. 2022 - now. experimenters.app. Circuit design and simulation with a custom circuit solver on Burst and real-time simulation on a deterministic architecture. Unity WebGL on desktop, tablet and phone, offline as a PWA, localized into 14 languages, 50+ ready-made labs. Grew from a game jam prototype into a standalone product, all 3D content authored in Houdini.

Open source. GPU-accelerated 2D drawing library and Unity extensions on GitHub. Docker setups for running 3D and video generation models on the Nvidia DGX Spark.

3D and DCC background

Started as a 3D modeler before moving into programming. 3ds Max, Blender and Houdini. Houdini digital assets brought into Unity through Houdini Engine. Python for tooling: Houdini scripting, ComfyUI custom nodes, Gradio clients.

Education

Moscow State Open University, 2008 - 2013. Specialist Degree in Engineering (five-year program), Software Engineering for Computing and Automated Systems.