My story so far.

I started programming as a kid, back when computers were a novelty and you had to type pages of code just to see a few circles appear on screen. Something about turning abstract text into something visual hooked me, and it never let go.

That curiosity carried me through a Computer Science degree at Politehnica București, into my first jobs as an engineer in the gaming industry - where code becomes worlds that get to be experienced by millions of people.

I started as a software engineer in 2005 at a small studio that became part of Vivendi, then joined Namco Bandai in 2008 - where I was running its programming department by 2011 - and moved to Ubisoft in 2013 to lead cross-discipline programming teams. From 2014 I spent seven years there as a Producer, working on IPs like Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, Ghost Recon, and Skull & Bones - leading teams of up to 500 people, spread across studios in Europe and North America.

Since 2021, I've been leading Funcom's Bucharest studio, which I opened from incorporation and grew to around 100 people. The studio's remit grew with it: QA for Conan Exiles across development and live operations, VFX and QA on Metal: Hellsinger, and a broad role on Dune: Awakening - engineering, QA, data analytics, marketing, monetization and live operations for a launch that sold one million units in its first two weeks.

Late 2025 was one of the hardest stretches. The group needed to cut costs, and the studio had to shrink. We designed a new structure, decided which roles would go, and carried out the restructuring, while keeping projects on track and the remaining team working. There is no painless way to do this. What we could do was make it fair, legal and clearly explained, and be present for the people it affected. The studio came through it smaller, but intact and still delivering.

Somewhere along this path, I realized that the most complex problem I kept facing wasn't technical. It was human. How do you learn more about yourself? How do you empower people to get past their self-imposed limitations? How do you get talented people to actually work together? How do you have the difficult conversations without breaking trust? How do you build a team culture that survives pressure?

This series of questions led me to Process Communication Model, to training, and to coaching. Not as a career change - but as a deepening of what I was already doing.