I'm Ahmad Abdallah. I have more than 13 years of experience in Unity and C#, most of it below the gameplay layer: interaction frameworks, editor tooling, asset and build pipelines, server-authoritative networking. I run Shababeek Labs in Abu Dhabi. We have two titles heading to Steam and a VR toolkit on the Asset Store.
Technical lead. Architecture, VR interaction, rendering, build optimization.
A narrative horror game set in a cassette-futurism office block belonging to the Consolidated Dynamics Corporation. I handle the technical side of it. That means the interaction layer level designers build against, a URP dot-matrix shader for the in-fiction terminals, and a lot of time spent getting a scene this heavy to hold frame rate on a standalone headset.
Networking and gameplay systems architecture
Competitive multiplayer on a flat-earth moon base, where crews keep a failing station running and sabotage each other while doing it. Most of the difficulty is in deciding who owns state. The station is full of shared machinery that several players operate at the same time, and a client-authoritative model falls apart the moment two of them disagree.
Sole author. Architecture, editor tooling, documentation, support.
A VR interaction framework built on OpenXR primitives instead of on top of XR Interaction Toolkit. The projects that led to it kept running into XRI's assumptions about interactable lifecycle. It covers hand-pose constraints, socket and multi-socket systems and constrained interactables, and designers configure all of it in the inspector.
Sole author. Architecture, 50+ binders, editor tooling.
The data-sharing layer underneath the rest of my Unity work, pulled out and released on its own. Systems read and write ScriptableObject variable assets instead of holding references to each other, so a UI element and the system feeding it can be built, tested and deleted independently. It ships with drivers, tweening, graph-authored event sequences and JSON-persisted containers.
The layer a team builds on and then rarely touches again. What I care about most here is who owns state and who is allowed to change it. Get that wrong and the codebase stops being workable somewhere in year two.
Most of my tooling work exists so that designers don't have to wait on a programmer to change something. On almost any project it is the cheapest schedule win available.
Standalone headsets and low-end Android present much the same problem. There is a fixed frame budget, and no way to negotiate it upward.
I started in computer engineering and low-level graphics, working in DirectX, OpenGL and CUDA. I came to Unity the way a lot of engine programmers do, wanting to know what the black box was actually doing.
That background still shapes how I work. Over thirteen years it has meant commercial titles at Kandooz, a live metaverse product at Highstreet, server-authoritative mobile multiplayer at Big Viking, and now Shababeek Labs, the studio I founded in Abu Dhabi under a DCT Abu Dhabi licence.
I also taught for about a decade: six years at SAE University College, the last three as head of the department, and three before that at Egypt's Information Technology Institute. I still teach game physics. Having to explain numerical integrators or continuous collision detection to a room of second-years keeps you honest about how well you understand them.
Open to lead and senior engine / gameplay roles, and to consulting engagements through Toptal. Fastest way to reach me is email.