Lauri Nykänen

Lauri Nykänen has a diverse range of work experience in the gaming and technology industry. Lauri began their career as a Corporal in the Finnish Defence Forces from July 2011 to July 2012. Following this, they worked as a Trainee at the University of Tampere, where they were responsible for developing a new web page for the School of Information Sciences using WordPress, PHP, and LESS.

In 2015, Lauri worked as a Trainee at Uusi Tehdas / New Factory, where they served as a project manager, lead programmer, and game designer on a children's safety game project. This project lasted for 11 months and was developed in JavaScript with the Phaser framework.

From July 2016 to January 2017, Lauri worked as a Game Programmer at Palringo, a group messaging application. Lauri was part of an international team and worked on three different games, focusing on programming gameplay mechanics, user interface, and front-end development.

Following Palringo, Lauri joined Tribered, a Finnish startup company, as a Game Developer. Lauri led the game design and technical implementation of HTML5 mobile games for clients such as Sony Music Entertainment and Olvi. Additionally, they were responsible for monetization for the location-based AR title Moomin Move.

In 2018, Lauri joined ZeptoLab as an HTML5 Developer. Their main responsibility was to create playable ads for the company, with a focus on acquiring new users for their game CATS: Crash Arena Turbo Stars. Lauri single-handedly developed the playables from scratch to release, including design, quality assurance, and technological implementations.

Lauri also worked briefly at CoolGames in 2019 as a Game Developer, and they are currently working at Liftoff Mobile as a Creative Technologist since September 2019.

Lauri Nykänen completed a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) degree in Computer Software Engineering from Tampere University of Applied Sciences from 2008 to 2013. Lauri then pursued a Master of Science (MS) degree in Software Development from University of Tampere from 2013 to 2016.