Russell Williams was program manager for international best sellers Microsoft Exchange, the Microsoft Golf series, and of course, Rails Across America. Before that he worked on the very first Windows email program, DaVinci eMail. A devoted computer game fanatic, he is proud to contribute to the interactive entertainment community through his membership in the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, and has an extensive collection of games going all the way back to the Apple II.

Rick was the solo developer of first Windows RPG game, Castle of the Winds. His previous Microsoft experience includes DOS Word, PM Word, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Money. He brings 17 years of programming experience to the team. Rick was single-handedly responsible for the automated routing system used in Rails Across America, as well as developing the normal mapping process for Delta Green.

Paul Canniff is a respected development manager on both large (50 - 100 people) and specialized teams for a diverse range of products, from network monitoring software to desktop publishing. He was Developer on Microsoft LAN Manager, Development Manager on Microsoft Publisher '98, and Lead Program Manager on Microsoft Exchange. He was the primary Game Designer for Rails Across America. He brings 20 years of programming and management experience to the team.

Tom entered the games industry in 2003 via the EVE-Online volunteer program, rising to become a player support team lead in under a year. In 2006, Tom joined the Flying Lab Community Team, where he administrated the official forums and chat channels for Pirates of the Burning Sea, and acted as assistant lead when necessary. In December 2008, Tom took over as the Community Lead. Aside from his community management pursuits, Tom is a trained photographer and occasional freelance web designer.

Cindy has over 20 years of experience in software development, animation production and project management. As CEO of Global Wonder Entertainment she was responsible for strategic planning and media production for clients such as Microsoft, Sony, Logitech, Hasbro and many other industry leaders. Prior to that Cindy worked at Hanna-Barbera Productions in Los Angeles on the development of state-of-the-art digital ink & paint technology for television animation production, and helped launch a large-scale digital TV animation studio in Taiwan. Cindy holds an M.S. degree in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology.

Jeff is the development lead for Flying Lab Casual.  He came to Flying Lab from a position as Sr. Architect at Sony Online Entertainment, working on the MMO / first-person-shooter hybrid The Agency. In that role he was responsible for several client-server gameplay systems and overall core server technology and managed a team of 6 programmers. Prior to SOE, Jeff worked for Nokia in San Francisco for several years, where he was the architect, development manager, and a programmer responsible for developing the Nokia NGage Arena mobile multiplayer gaming platform. In that role he managed a client software development team and 2 server teams, and released several versions of both web services and hardware-embedded mobile device software.  His experience in earlier years includes project management and architect positions in games, mobile, and virtual worlds companies, and two attempts at forming software startups.

Drew Clowery got his start in the game industry as a Customer Service Representative on Mythic Entertainment's Dark Age of Camelot. After a hiatus to finish college, Drew joined the Flying Lab team as a Game Designer for Pirates of the Burning Sea. There he built the first iteration of the Avatar Combat system, as well as contributing core design elements of the Skirmish system, and assisted in tuning and balancing. Drew left the Pirates team to take the position of Lead Game Designer on Flying Lab Casual's MMO for children, Upper Deck U.

John's credentials include having worked as lead level designer, producer, creative director, game designer, artist, and tester. He began his career in games at Nintendo and has worked at VALVE, EA, Microsoft, and Propaganda Games. His work includes projects for the Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo Wii, Sony PSP and for the PC covering the following genres FPS, Action Adventure, RPG, MMORPG and Sports titles. He has been the Lead Designer on Pirates of the Burning Sea since June 2009.

Brad's last position was with BigFish Games, where he administrated the network and services to support their current rates of 250M web hits/month and sustained bandwidth transfer rates in excess of 600Mbit/s.  He came to Flying Lab from BigFish, and plans and deploys servers as well as serving as administrator for them. Brad planned and installed the servers in Stockholm, Sweden for the Russian release of Pirates.

Brady spent five years at SmartRun Systems as a software engineer on a variety of projects, including the creation of device drivers for a video capture board, computers for hydroplanes, and the Advanced Authoring Format. He joined the games industry and worked for Humongous Entertainment for four and a half years as a senior programmer on titles such as Backyard Baseball for the GameCube and Backyard Skateboarding for the PC, and served as lead programmer on Backyard Basketball for the PC. While at Humongous he spent a year in the systems group working on the core technology used in many of their titles. Brady has worked on two Academy of Interactive Arts and Science Game of the Year winners:  Backyard Basketball (5th Annual PC Family Game of the Year), and Backyard Skateboarding (8th Annual Children's Game of the Year).

Lindsey has breathed life into characters at Flying Lab since 2005, and in 2006 graduated with a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Seattle. Having animated sword-brandishing swashbucklers and various creatures in Pirates of the Burning Sea, she has since moved to Flying Lab's casual game division to direct character creation and animation for the children's MMO Upper Deck U. Along with rigging and animating characters, she is a published illustrator, and enjoys working on children's books in her spare time.

Clint started testing games in 2004 at Microsoft Game Studios on the Zoo Tycoon 2 test team. Two years later he joined Flying Lab Software and made significant QA contributions to Pirates of the Burning Sea in virtually all areas of the game. Clint took leave from the Pirates team to join the Upper Deck U project, where he has been the Test Lead since day one.

Kevin Maginn came from a background of web development, and started at Flying Lab as a scripter and web programmer, creating the web-based online user content system and our database-driven web site. He also developed the earliest UI prototypes for Pirates of the Burning Sea, before moving into a design role on the project, where he created the skill system, the economy, and the world PvP system. Since then he has taken leadership of the Pirates design, supervising the creation and ongoing development of all the major game systems.

Justin is the Development lead for Pirates of the Burning Sea.

Todd began in support, moved on to QA, and has been there ever since. He has worked at companies such as Boeing, Microsoft, Vulcan, and Safeco testing many types of software from Operating Systems and eCommerce to video games and audio video software.

Bruce is a veteran artist and illustrator whose work for publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, Omni Magazine, and The Washington Post spans a twenty-year career. In addition to his long professional experience in traditional media, he entered the games industry fifteen years ago as an art director at Sierra On-Line and has since worked at BOSS Game Studios and Microsoft Game Studios. He has also been a teacher for nineteen years at Seattle Art Institute in commercial illustration and 3-D modeling and animation. His thousands of students now populate the game studios of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, and his mastery of light, color, and shadow has graced many PC and Xbox titles over the years.

Mat has been with Flying Lab Software since 2005. He began his career animating on Pirates of the Burning Sea after studying at the Art Institute of Seattle and the University of North Texas. Since then, he's had a hand in animating every living thing in the game. Recently, Mat has been responsible for the look and feel of the new avatar combat system and overseeing the rest of the animation team as Animation Lead.

Janice left the good ship Academia to join the FLS crew in 2007 after finishing her BS in Journalism from Boston University and MS in Human Centered Design from the University of Washington. Her head is filled with oceans of knowledge about the interaction between players and their games, which she uses to design UI, run playtests and craft meaningful player experiences. In addition to her role on PotBS, Janice also assists Flying Lab Casual with their games and is Producing an as-yet unannounced project.

Brian has spent several years working in customer service and technical support. Before moving to Seattle and joining the gaming industry with Flying Lab Software, Brian lived in his native California, where he worked for a major local ISP and also ran his own computer repair business. He is very loyal to PC gaming, shuns consoles, and rides a longboard to work.

Brad started in architecture, where he would do digital presentation animations and renderings for clients architecture firms.  He then moved over to the Sonic Team for over three years afterward in San Francisco with Sega of America on two published titles.  The first of the two was Shadow the Hedgehog which was released December of 2005, after which he then worked on Nights: Journey of Dreams. 

Michelle has been managing software testing since 1995, including testing client/server applications at Microsoft for the Development Studio products. She was liaison manager between Real Networks and Nokia, and has extensive experience in all aspects of testing, including localization testing and coordinating betas. She has written and executed manual and automated tests on platforms as diverse as high-end PCs and WAP-enabled cell phones. Michelle moved from overseeing internal testing and external support staff to producer for all of Pirates.

Raymond is a Silicon Valley dot com survivor who escaped into the games industry. Since joining Flying Lab in 2005, he's worked at every level of the Content team, and now leads the team with that perspective. For Pirates of the Burning Sea, Raymond designed major portions of the mission infrastructure and created most of the enemies. Raymond has logged over 20,000 hours in various online games.