Matt Shetler, Adrienne Pugh, Marcel Swanepoel, Jeremy Albert, Harold Emsheimer, Julie McConnell, Phil Rampulla, Rhys Harwell, Ben Taels, Riley Florence, Craig Parkinson, Jesse Raymond, Pavlo Grubyi, Kelly Rice, Jacob Grubbe, Sean Smith, Martin Craster, Rachel Leiker, and a hundred more...
My Role
Functional Role: Head of UX/UI
Title: Director, UXUI (L6)
Business Impact
Maintained 0.8% attrition rate vs. 20-25% industry average over 3 years, avoiding costly replacement costs
Unblocked simultaneous launch of OG Season, Chapter 5 Big Bang, Lego Fortnite, Festival, and Rocket Racing - The most successful day in Fortnite’s history
Resolved 50% of critical UI tech debt, creating 70 scalable components that reduced build time by 95%
Reduced time-to-productivity for new designers from months to weeks
Supported 20+ concurrent projects across Epic
What I did
Built department structure
Created scalable onboarding systems
Built a high performance hiring system
Established Skills Frameworks
Formalized design disciplines & created a new one
Funded & Managed a team to address UI technical debt
Managed 3-4 layers of management (directors - leads)
M
"The UI technology we needed to solve our tech debt and build a scalable UI system didn't exist. We had to invent it. The team we needed to invent the technology also didn't exist. I had to hire them all. And, we couldn't stop shipping seasonal features to do it."
The Challenge
In 2020, Fortnite hit its viral peak. Tim Sweeney, our CEO, had a vision of turning Fortnite into the Metaverse, a creator platform with thousands of unique experiences.
UX/UI faced serious barriers.
Scope of our work:
We weren't just making Figma designs. We built UI and animations in the engine, from concept to delivery to evolution. We designed for millions of daily active users who spent hours on the platform and had passionate opinions about every change. Almost every update hit the front page of Fortnite Reddit within minutes.
The Problems:
UI artists frequently worked weekends and until 2am
They had irreplaceable knowledge of UMG (the UI tool in Unreal Engine), a black box technology with almost no public documentation at the time
Fortnite's UI was spaghetti code from 7 years before the Battle Royale pivot
E.g., Redesigning the lobby should take 2-3 weeks. It would take 4-5 months
We had zero additional UX/UI leadership. Everyone was an individual contributor
No structure. No frameworks. We were starting from nothing
The Strategic Choice: Two Paths, Different Risks
Path 1: Moderate team, flat structure
Hire as needed. Keep minimal leadership. Swarm projects based on priority. I deploy designers and manage them directly while doing IC work myself.
Risks we'd absorb:
20-25% industry attrition = Possibly millions in annual replacement costs
Bottlenecked decisions (I review most work)
Bottlenecked growth (I'm half focused on IC work)
Burnout and knowledge loss from overworked talent
Reputation damage (word gets around in a small industry when a team is grinding hard)
Path 2: Large org, with autonomous layers
Invest in infrastructure. Hire strong, independent leaders. Build retention systems.
Suitable for a large, multi-product company with continually scaling ambitions.
Risks we'd absorb:
Slower initial scaling (finding the right leaders takes time)
There was no way I’d handle the scope as a sole leader. We would have never gotten there with a half burned out, flat team structure. Losing senior talent with undocumented UMG knowledge would seriously damage Epic’s ability to deliver. We needed a department that could handle the scale without falling apart.
I built a presentation and circulated it around to leadership and lateral peers at all levels and I got buy in.
What we did & why: Strategic bets that paid off
Built retention infrastructure before we needed it
What we did:
Operationalized culture into concrete action statements
Created skills framework with clear promotion paths (no more "politics and feels")
Built comprehensive onboarding that cut time-to-productivity from months to weeks
Hired emotionally intelligent, capable leaders—waited as long as needed to find the right people
The leaders I hired espoused our culture and kept us together in tough times. Without them, no framework would have mattered.
Business outcomes:
Stability: 0.8% attrition vs. 20-25% industry average over 3 years (Reduced overhead, recruiting expenses)
Retained irreplaceable UMG knowledge
Had the right team ready for the Big Bang launch event in 2023, one of Fortnite's most successful days, and the moment it became a platform
Consistently high morale, even in tough times
Solved structural problems to fix technical debt
The risks I saw:
The Metaverse would require completely overhauling Fortnite's front end. Billions in ARR at stake. While it wasn’t the #1 priority in 2020, I knew it would be eventually. Once it was, executives would demand immediate progress. (no surprise, they did).
Tech debt had to be solved.
No way around it.
UI artists were pulling all-nighters because the code was a mess. Every button was a one-off, often sitting next to invisible, deprecated systems.
The navigation used by millions was a postage-stamp-sized widget sitting in the middle of a large, invisible Save the World navigation widget. All the UI interconnected in unpredictable ways.
And no one had time to fix any of it.
I couldn't push already-stretched artists to also fix tech debt. They couldn't build training programs. They didn't have design systems expertise.
This was a tremendous risk for the business.
What we did:
I created the Technical UI Design discipline from scratch. I outlined the business case, drove alignment, and got it funded
Once we had a bench of Technical UI Designers, I spun up a product team to begin addressing the tech debt. But the engine didn’t have the technology to solve it correctly so we had to invent it. We partnered with the engine team to invent CSS-like technology within UMG
We built 70 scalable components while shipping seasons, and began replacing parts of the front end, carefully, piece by piece
Worked with an outside agency to build a training curriculum for the wider industry
So many team members contributed to these solutions, but two of the leaders in particular stand out here. Adrienne Pugh (Technical UI Design Discipline Director) and Pavlo Grubi (Tech UI Design Director) put in heroic effort on all these initiatives. They’re both inspirational leaders and I’m proud to have gotten to work with them.
Business Outcomes:
Resolved 50% of UI tech debt
95% faster to build and make changes
Unlocked launch of 3 new games—Epic's first major step toward the Metaverse
Unlocked the ability to connect content in all 4 games (An outfit that worked in Fortnite worked in Rocket Racing)
Widened the talent funnel by demystifying how to build UI in engine
When the Big Bang event became the priority, my bets paid off. We moved quickly because the team, tech, and cleanup work already existed.
Built for autonomous operations
The problem:
We had no idea how many different projects we’d be required to work on at once. I got signals that it would be many from the different leaders across Epic I worked with. 2 UI teams on Fortnite alone, leap frogging one another. 2-3 teams working across the front end on monetization to discovery and personalization efforts. Things were adding up. At its peak, we were working on 20 concurrent projects simultaneously.
If I had needed to review and approve all the work, I’d have been the bottleneck.
What we did:
Hired directors who could roll up their sleeves, do design, and present up to the C-Suite
Empowered leaders to make calls and move forward, while allowing me to direct where needed and stay informed
Built a roles & responsibilities framework for cross-team collaboration
Had teams create RACI frameworks with their adjacent teams so they could function within a larger org, while still being empowered to move quickly
Created monthly company-wide communication showcasing work and business outcomes
Extended trust from day one to those I hired
Business Outcome:
Teams delivered hundreds of features over the years on compressed timelines because they had clarity and trust.
Why this mattered: The counterfactual
If we'd optimized for short-term speed over capability:
Strategic risk: The Big Bang event would've been impossible, blocking the Metaverse strategy
Quality risk: UI disasters would've angered players and crushed DAU
Financial risk: 20-25% attrition = millions in annual replacement costs + knowledge loss
Capability risk: When Tim's vision accelerated, we wouldn't have the team or tech to execute
Wrapping Up
Building from 7 to 140+ people while maintaining less than 1% attrition wasn't easy. I didn't do it alone. I worked with excellent recruiters, compassionate HR partners, leaders who believed in the plan, and teammates who helped every step.
How we did it in under 4 years comes down to culture and follow-through. Craft a culture that resonates with people, and they’ll sign on. Following through even when it's tough, gets them to stay.
We put people first. We prioritized work-life balance alongside getting things done. We built trust and candor. We leaned into kindness.
We all contributed ideas to evolve how we worked.
And we all got a ton of stuff done.
This consistency became our competitive advantage. While the industry averaged 20-25% attrition, we built a stable foundation that let us move fast when it mattered, because our people trusted they weren't building on sand.
These concepts don't fit every situation, team, or company.
.png)
.png)
