Nathan St. Pierre is a full-stack developer with our Cloud Services team in Bellevue, WA. From the Developer Dashboard to Unity Collaborate, Nathan and his team strive to improve the cloud-based services that Unity offers to our developer community. Get to know more about Nathan and his work by reading on!

What does your day-to-day look like?

Mostly working on web interfaces for our developer services, like Collaborate and Cloud Diagnostics. I’m what’s called a “full-stack” developer, which means I also work on our server code and do more mundane things like trying to update versions of Linux virtual machines.

What were you up to before joining Unity?

I most recently came from Amazon. There, I was a software developer for a product called GameCircle. If you look at a Fire TV game controller, GameCircle is that little symbol that looks like a cross between a beach ball and a radiation symbol. It tracks your achievements and leaderboards. Before that, a ton of small companies in Texas.

Why did you decide to work at Unity?

I’ve always loved Unity’s approach to solving problems, and how responsive we are to issues even the smallest indie devs face with the company’s tools. We also admit when we don’t have the best answers and work to fix it. It’s a great fit for my mentality.

Have you met any professional milestones at Unity?

I’ve gotten to lead a lot of initiatives and come up with product ideas, which as an individual contributor is not always something you often get to do. My work has also been featured in a few Unite keynotes, which is pretty amazing to see.

What do you enjoy about Unity company culture?

I love the fact that the company is really focused on getting things done. We have annual hackweeks and dedicate time each week to passion projects in order to get new ideas out there. Many of these side-projects become real products users see.

Overall, what do you enjoy about working at Unity?

I feel like our fundamental approach to helping people is novel. Our mission is to make it easier for people to make games, videos, interactive experiences and more. We want to make learning code and computer technology more accessible, and with our new Machine Learning initiatives, I think we’re giving people the skills they’ll need if they want to continue to be productive and happy in an increasingly technological world. For example: what way is more accessible and fun than learning machine learning by playing fetch with a virtual corgi?

What do you like most about Unity?

My favorite thing about Unity is the culture in which you can work on the things you find most important and valuable. If you have good skills, you can move somewhere where you don’t yet have great skills in order to learn, and the company supports that.

What would you tell someone considering a career at Unity?

I think the biggest thing to consider is what your long-term goals are. Sure, you’ll grow within the company, but overall you’re changing an industry, and that’s a pretty cool thing to stick on your resume or think about when you retire.

Favorite video game?

My all-time favorite right now is Castlevania: Symphony of The Night. I love the Metroidvania-style games: it was the closest thing to an open world at the time, and I think a part of me always wants to return to that (Not surprisingly, my second favorite is River City Ransom, and I have an embarrassing amount of hours in Fallout 4 and Skyrim).

What’s your favorite non-Unity related activity?

My degree is actually in Music Composition, so I spend a lot of time playing instruments and filling in as a bass, guitar, or piano player for local bands. I also make a lot of stuff in my off-time, including music, art, fiction, and poetry. Mostly I love spending time with my wife and our son, who are also huge nerds.

Any other thoughts on working here?

Unity empowers you to be awesome. You’re already awesome, why not have someone be psyched about that?

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If you’re interested in joining Nathan on the Services team or learning about other opportunities at Unity, check out our careers page! You can also get to know more about people at Unity by checking out some of our previous Faces of Unity blog posts.