Senior R&D Prototyping Engineer
I’m Nicolás Bertoa. For more than 15 years I’ve worked in research and development, turning uncertain technical ideas into prototypes, production tools, experiments, and evidence that teams can use to decide what to build next.
Prototype
Reduce ambiguity quickly with focused POCs and working systems.
Investigate
Measure behavior, compare approaches, and document trade-offs instead of relying on intuition.
Communicate
Turn findings into clear technical explanations, tools, documentation, and reusable knowledge.
Current technical focus
Unreal Engine · C++ · prototyping · real-time systems · tooling · technical R&D
Unreal Engine is one of my main tools today, but I treat it as part of a broader real-time engineering background that also includes computer graphics, DirectX, systems work, technical research, and rapid experimentation.
Experience
DreamWorks Animation
At DreamWorks Animation, I contributed to R&D projects around Premo and Luna, proprietary animation and rigging technology. My work grew from feature development and bug fixing into architecture, optimization, and engineering problems involving C++, mathematics, computer graphics, OpenGL, and production tooling.
Sony Interactive Entertainment · 2021–present
- Translate ambiguous or evolving requirements into focused Unreal Engine prototypes that make ideas concrete and testable.
- Build and iterate on interaction prototypes involving hardware, using C++, Blueprints, SDK integrations, and rapid experimentation.
- Create POCs to validate technical feasibility, explore implementation approaches, and provide evidence for go/no-go decisions.
- Use iterative demos and feedback to refine concepts, uncover constraints, and clarify what should be explored next.
- Investigate hardware capabilities, performance, integration issues, and technical risks through targeted debugging and profiling.
- Contribute to early-stage R&D where innovation, creativity, and fast technical validation are more important than committing immediately to a production solution.
How I work
Start with a question. Research only what the experiment needs. Build the smallest useful prototype. Measure or evaluate the result. Document what worked, what failed, and what should happen next.
Teaching & technical communication
I’m an Unreal Authorized Instructor — Silver. Teaching, documentation, and technical communication are part of the engineering process for me: a result is more useful when other people can understand the reasoning behind it.
What R&D means in my work
For me, R&D is primarily about reducing technical uncertainty. The work is to understand an unclear problem, its requirements, context, constraints, risks, and timeline; research the relevant technology; compare realistic alternatives; build the smallest useful prototype; validate what actually works; and turn the result into a recommendation the team can act on.
Build, buy, or integrate
I do not treat custom implementation as the default answer. I first ask whether Unreal Engine already solves the problem, whether a mature plugin or library exists, and whether buying or integrating an existing solution is a better engineering decision when maintenance, support, source access, dependency risk, quality, and time saved are considered. Custom development comes after that evaluation.
AI-assisted R&D
AI is a constant engineering companion in my workflow: technical research, unfamiliar APIs, alternative exploration, hypothesis generation, code review, architecture critique, debugging, documentation, requirement decomposition, estimation support, presentations, and demo scripts. It accelerates iteration, but it does not replace engineering judgment, verification, or understanding.
Professional R&D and public evidence
Much of the R&D I do for clients is necessarily confidential. BertaDevKit and my personal experiments therefore act as a public R&D laboratory: a place to investigate technologies, evaluate tools and plugins, prototype ideas, develop reusable infrastructure, document trade-offs, and show the reasoning behind technical decisions without exposing client code or proprietary information.
Contact
For professional conversations around R&D, prototyping, Unreal Engine, C++, or real-time technology: