John Byrd

Skills

  • Recent open-source AI work: audio ML for real-time systems, LLM code-understanding tooling, annotated transformer implementations
  • Deep technical foundation: AI patents granted; contributions to LLVM, cryptography, and low-level systems
  • Decades shipping software across consoles, tools, and audio products — from the Sega Dreamcast SDK to modern audio middleware
  • Proven passion and talent for building and mentoring engineering teams

Experience

Chief Executive Officer, Gigantic Software

· Irvine, CA

  • Made and sold audio middleware and tools, based on novel AI model
  • Acquired customers including Sony, Disney, Technicolor, Konami, Electronic Arts
  • Wrote novel DSP code and tools for next-generation consoles
  • Millions of copies of games sold using company's technology
  • Filed patents on new designs
  • Gave multiple presentations at GDC
  • Invited speaker at USC's Interactive Media and Games Division and AES

Director of Software, Sonance

· San Clemente, CA

  • Created, hired and managed internal software development team
  • Conceived, built, and proved new software platform for novel audio products
  • Established Agile development processes with highly distributed development teams
  • Built source code repository and CI/CD test systems
  • Delivered new software features on a monthly cadence
  • Managed and mentored software engineers of widely varying skill levels and abilities

Chief Operating Officer, CRI Middleware (Sega)

· San Francisco, CA

  • Founded US division
  • Sold CRI's audio middleware products, originally developed by SEGA-AM2, into US markets
  • Cultivated leads, demonstrated products, answered deep technical questions
  • Negotiated contracts and payment schedules with most major US game publishers
  • Built profitable business in under three years

Senior Project Manager, Electronic Arts

· San Francisco, CA

  • Tasked and scheduled 61 artists, engineers and production personnel for Freekstyle, an AAA action-sports game
  • Triaged and assigned bugs
  • Managed master game schedule

Director of Development Technology, Sega of America

· San Francisco, CA

  • Created the Sega Dreamcast (Katana) SDK
  • Managed development, integration and testing for several Dreamcast core libraries and tools
  • Managed North American developer technical support
  • Built long-term relationships with developers and partner companies
  • Coached and helped grow engineers and non-technical employees
  • Full-time staff of thirteen

Projects

  • comprehend

    A methodology for making AI assistants understand code bases via a measure-first workflow

  • zbc

    Zero Board Computer: a specification for an emulatable, open-source software bringup board

  • aggrogpt

    Annotated reading of Karpathy's microgpt plus a typed PyTorch reimplementation with a thin tensor abstraction

  • llvm-mos

    Founded project, helped write 6502 backend for LLVM, and built development community

  • Crypto++ Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

    Found and ethically reported remote code execution vulnerability

Academic

BA in Computer Science, Harvard College

  • Guest Lecturer at University of Southern California — Lectured on interactive audio
  • Speaker at Game Developer Conference — Presented at industry leading game development conference
  • Speaker at AES — Presented ten-year predictions about artificial intelligence trends in audio
  • Top Writer at Quora — Top Writer on software development and management with over 11M views, translated by fans into eight languages