Connor Hengstler

Computer Science · UBC · Class of 2028

Prev SWE @ Aerospike, Game Designer @ EA

Systems built to hold up under pressure.

I'm a software engineer and CS student who moves between AAA Game logic and distributed backend systems, from seasonal event centerpieces on Skate at EA to graph database applications at Aerospike.

View my work → connorhengstler@gmail.com

Featured

Frostbite gameplay systems on Skate

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Work Experience

01 / Internships

EA · Vancouver

Gameplay systems on Skate

Designed and shipped logic for 19 gameplay activities in the Frostbite engine, developed the core event progression and reward system, and prototyped future-season mechanics with visual scripting.

Frostbite Engine Visual Scripting Gameplay Systems
View case study →
Skate gameplay

Aerospike · Mountain View, CA

Aerospike Graph

Distributed systems for a graph database

Rebuilt load balancing across three Gremlin drivers, cut fraud-detection latency by 70%, and shipped an MCP server connecting LLM agents to the graph database.

Gremlin Distributed Systems CI/CD
View case study →

BC Pension Corporation · Victoria, BC

QA automation for a 650K-user platform

Created 120+ keyword tests using TestComplete & Python to automate functional testing, designed 220+ advanced SQL queries for Oracle SQL Database, and managed 300+ test scenarios to identify and resolve software defects.

TestComplete Python Oracle SQL
View case study →
BC Pension Corporation

Personal Projects

02 / Side Projects

FungiFields FungiFieldsUnreal Engine farming sim Expand +

A farming sim where every crop task is its own mini-game. All of them run on one C++ lifecycle contract, so a new mini-game is a Blueprint subclass rather than an engine change.

Crops and soil plots register into world subsystems and advance on a shared timer instead of ticking, currency lives on a Gameplay Ability System attribute set, and quests progress by subscribing to gameplay delegates rather than polling.

The hardest piece was the tilling mini-game, which turns authored plot-local offsets into a two-phase screen-space drag that rotates with the plot and poses the hoe as you pull.

Tilling mini-game github.com/OblivionBC/FungiFields →
Throwspace ThrowspaceFull-stack athlete tracking app Expand +

Engineered a RESTful PostgreSQL API with over 75 SQL endpoints and two external integrations, reducing manual data handling by 40%.

Designed and deployed a JWT authentication system with granular role-based permissions for different user groups.

Deployed and maintained a full-stack React application on Vercel and Supabase, running Agile iterations with the UBC Track team.

github.com/OblivionBC →
Soulsborne SoulsborneUnreal Engine Expand +

A 3D Soulslike built in Unreal Engine, with modular components built on the Component Design Pattern.

Combat runs on a delegate-based notification system and the Gameplay Ability System.

Engineered a boss projectile ability in Unreal C++, solving per-throw ballistic launch vectors (Unreal arc solver with a hand-derived closed-form fallback) with swept-sphere hit resolution.

github.com/OblivionBC →

03 / About

Three internships across QA, infrastructure, and games.

I'm a Computer Science student at the University of British Columbia (GPA 3.9, expected 2028). Since 2024 I've worked as a Software Developer in Test at BC Pension Corporation, a Software Engineering Intern at Aerospike, and a Game Design Intern on Skate at EA, moving between QA rigor, backend infrastructure, and shipped gameplay.

Outside of internships I build full-stack tools and VR prototypes on my own, usually because I want to use them myself.

How I work+

How I work

01

Decouple early. Systems that separate cleanly are the ones you can extend without breaking.

02

Measure before you optimize. Every improvement I've shipped started with a number, not a hunch.

03

Ship, then iterate. A working version in production teaches you more than a perfect one on your laptop.

Skills

Languages

C++, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Gremlin, C#

Tools

Unreal Engine, Frostbite, XR/VR, Git, GitHub Actions, Docker, Jira, React, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Unity