Michael McManus

Background

About Michael McManus

I’m a product and technical program leader with 20+ years of experience building products, scaling platforms, and growing teams in both enterprise and startup environments. At Microsoft, I led platform and program teams across Minecraft, Xbox, and HoloLens, where I helped launch new categories, scale platforms and services used by millions, and deliver cross-platform updates that required deep coordination across engineering, product, and partner teams. At Rec Room, I supported the Core team, accelerating development, coordinating weekly multi-platform releases, and driving major platform upgrades. I’ve built teams from scratch, managed global outsourcing and partner relationships, and introduced frameworks that improved iteration speed and roadmap clarity. I’m equally comfortable leading at scale or digging into system design details, and I bring a mix of execution discipline and product intuition. I lead with clarity and trust, and I’m at my best in fast-moving, ambiguous environments where teams need focus and confidence to deliver. My work has centered on shaping platform roadmaps and scaling systems engineering so that creators and teams can deliver great experiences at global scale. Gaming has been both my career and my passion, and I bring the same curiosity and drive to building platforms as I do to restoring and modifying the consoles and arcades in my own collection.