Bob Watson

Bob Watson

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Supervisor QA Director / 23 yrs

Warsaw, Masovian District, Poland

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Live Operations Coordinator

Guild Wars: Nightfall (2006)

City of Heroes (2004)

City of Heroes (2004)
QA professional with 15+ years of games industry experience including Production and Live Operations. Led QA on dozens of shipped titles from handheld console platformers to PC MMOs.

Core areas of expertise include:
Agile QA (CSM) - Test Planning / Execution / Scheduling / Resourcing - Tester Recruitment / Mentoring / Management - Global QA Coordination - Bug Workflow - Live QA (SaaS) - Community QA - Test Automation - DevTesting - Exploratory Testing
Work History

  • QA Director

    CD PROJEKT RED

    August 2015 - Present

  • QA Manager

    Ubisoft

    December 2012 - July 2015

    Led QA on Ghost Recon Phantoms from Open Beta through to successful launch as one of the top 10 Steam F2P titles. Currently managing overall Vision, Roadmap and Strategy for Singapore QA team.

  • Head of Games QM

    Bigpoint

    January 2012 - August 2012

    QA Management on 60+ F2P titles. Standardised numerous processes including bug reporting, classification and workflow across internal dev teams. Created formal job descriptions and structured org chart for QA department.

  • Producer

    Bigpoint

    June 2011 - February 2012

    Managed dev team on F2P browser based title. Set development priorities, encouraged adoption of Scrum and managed anniversary event generating highest single-day title revenues ever.

  • Associate Producer

    Disney Interactive Studios

    February 2009 - May 2011

    Concept-to-release production support for numerous licensed and original AAA titles from handheld /casual to multiplatform AAA. Included extended on-site work with numerous developers.

  • European QA Lead

    Disney Interactive Studios

    December 2006 - December 2008

    Recruited by Head of European QA at DIS. Managed QA on numerous EU-developed AAA projects, working with DIS internal QA (US/UK based) plus outsourced teams.

  • Live Operations Coordinator

    NCsoft Europe

    August 2005 - December 2006

    Ensured stability/quality for MMOs: City of Heroes/Villains, Lineage II, Guild Wars etc. Managed functionality/localisation QA and go/no-go for build publish to live servers.

  • QA Manager

    Babel Media

    July 2004 - February 2005

    Designed, implemented and managed entirely new org structure for PC/Console QA in UK office.

    Managed 10+ Project Supervisors, 100+ freelance and permanent localisation/functionality testers.

    Planned, resourced and managed QA across all PC/Console projects. Ensured quality via metric analysis, staff appraisal and continuous evaluation / improvement of process.

  • QA Manager

    Babel Media (New Delhi)

    August 2003 - July 2004

    QA Manager for Babel's New Delhi office, headed team of 20+ testers plus Leads from UK. Covered functionality testing on numerous Mobile, Console and PC titles.

  • QA Lead

    Babel Media

    June 2000 - June 2003

    Freelance QA: Functionality, First-party Standards and English Localisation testing.

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Education

  • BSc in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence

    University of Sussex

    2001 - 2003

  • BA in International Relations

    University of Sussex

    1997 - 2000