Spencer Piontkowski

Online Engineering Director. Backend & live services for large-scale online games; Reliability; Org Leadership

I lead the Online Engineering team behind the global backends for Rocket League and Rocket League Sideswipe—serving many millions of monthly players. My team owns the end-to-end online stack and dedicated server fleet: auth/login, matchmaking, leaderboards, inventories, shops and real-money purchases, item drops, parties, push notifications, plus deployment and autoscaling of dedicated game servers.

Results:

  • Rolled out autoscaling across backend services and dedicated servers which led to higher reliability and multi-million-dollar annual cost savings.
  • Delivered sub-region matchmaking that cut global player ping by ≈10%.
  • Drove a roadmap aligned to studio priorities; the team never missed or delayed a game client release.

Focus areas: large-scale game backends, live-ops reliability, dedicated server orchestration, autoscaling, cost efficiency, matchmaking quality, org/people leadership.

Experience

Epic Games - Online Engineering Director (November 2024 – Present)

Acting at director scope since Oct 2023 (pre-title-change at Psyonix)

  • Lead an 8-engineer team operating global backends and dedicated server infrastructure for two titles with tens of millions monthly active users (MAU); scope includes auth, matchmaking, leaderboards, inventories, commerce (real-money transactions), drops, parties, push, and live-ops tooling.
  • Designed and shipped autoscaling for microservices and dedicated servers; result: improved reliability and multi-million dollar annual cost reduction.
  • Launched sub-region matchmaking which reduced global player ping by ≈10% and resulted in higher match quality.
  • Owned fleet deployment, scaling, and utilization, with reducing ops toil as a key priority.
  • Drove a roadmap aligned to studio priorities.

Psyonix (Epic Games subsidiary) - Lead Online Services Engineer (January 2020 - November 2024)

Scope: Led a team of 5 engineers owning core online services for Rocket League and Sideswipe games: account systems, progression/inventory, wallets, commerce, matchmaking, and live-ops.

  • In-place promotion in October 2023 (scope expansion, not title change):
    • Added the entire 8-engineer team operating the global backends and dedicated server infrastructure.
  • Shipped account linking enabling Epic ↔ Rocket League linkage with zero-downtime at launch. Key features included unified cross-platform progression, inventory, and wallet balances.
  • Co-led Rocket League Sideswipe online stack through a massive launch (millions MAU) with stable day 1 performance.
  • Drove delivery/operations for multiple live features with no missed client releases; partnered closely with product, design, and client teams.
  • Scoped and delivered roadmap for online services; coached 5 engineers (hiring, mentoring, reviews, growth planning).
  • Contributed to unannounced projects from discovery to prototype to integration (details under NDA).

Psyonix - Online Services Engineer (November 2016 – January 2020)

Scope: Principal backend owner for Rocket League China and core online services; cross-functional partner to external teams.

  • Served as principal backend engineer for Rocket League China; shipped in 2019 in partnership with Tencent Games after multiple on-site working trips; added all Tencent integrations required to launch.
  • Managed workload of multiple outsourced engineers (requirements, sprint planning/standups, code reviews) to deliver Challenge and Shop systems—features still powering live operations.
  • Built/maintained backend services supporting high-scale live traffic; improved reliability and supportability through clean interfaces, instrumentation, and docs.
  • Coordinated cross-team launches across time zones; unblocked partners with clear integration specs and fast code reviews.

Toasted Lime - Freelance Backend Developer (2012 – 2016)

Scope: Independent consultant delivering backend services and APIs for multiple clients simultaneously.

  • Balanced four clients/projects at once; shipped on time and on budget with repeat engagements.
  • Delivered stable, maintainable backends that helped one client win additional contracts.
  • Owned end-to-end delivery: requirements, architecture, implementation, testing, deployment, and handoff.

Volunteer Experience

Pacific Southwest Railway Museum (psrm.org) — Volunteer Infrastructure & Web Lead · 2014–Present

  • Sole admin for the nonprofit’s only production web server; keep psrm.org online and secure. Handle all upgrades across OS and stack: Ubuntu Linux, Nginx, PHP, MariaDB, WordPress.
  • Built a custom WordPress plugin integrating Stripe to accept online donations; processed tens of thousands of dollars from 200+ donors with a 98% success rate.

Selected Projects

  • Cross‑Platform Account Linking & Progression — Zero‑downtime rollout; unified identity and entitlements.
  • Rocket League Sideswipe — Backend & live services for mobile; scaled to millions of MAU.
  • Rocket League China — Regional launch; service hardening and features for compliance and scale.

Skills

Languages: Go, Python, C++, TypeScript/Node.js, SQL
Cloud: AWS (EC2, ECS, Lambda, DynamoDB, RDS), GCP, Cloudflare
Data/Infra: Kafka, Redis, PostgreSQL, MySQL, BigQuery, Elasticsearch, Kubernetes, Terraform
Practices: SRE, Observability, Incident Management, A/B Testing, Privacy (GDPR/CCPA), Security Reviews
Leadership: Strategy, Roadmapping, Org Design, Hiring & Mentoring, Stakeholder Management

Early Career (2007 - 2013)

  • L3 Harris, Project Scheduler and Financial Analyst

Education

  • MBA, University of Florida (2012)
  • BS Finance, University of Central Florida (2007)