Professional Recommendations
Carlos Melo - 2026
Next World XR - Product Director
Supervisor
What I valued most was his attitude. He was eager to learn, asked good questions, and took feedback on board and acted on it rather than repeating the same mistakes. He also showed real initiative, identifying what needed doing and getting on with it without waiting to be asked, and he was always willing to help a teammate who was stuck.
On top of the work itself, he was a pleasure to have on the team and I genuinely enjoyed working with him. He is hard-working, dependable and committed to getting better at what he does, and I would gladly work with him again. I recommend him without reservation to anyone looking for a developer who will do the job properly and keep improving.
During my time leading the development team at Next World XR, Shannon worked under me as a VR developer and programmer. That was the role he was hired for, but he didn't confine himself to it. When the work called for it he also took on 3D art and QA, and he was capable across all of it.
As a developer he could be trusted with genuine gameplay and feature work, not only the smaller tasks you might hand to someone finding their feet. Beyond that, he produced solid 3D assets and animations when the project needed them, and his QA was careful and genuinely useful, the sort that surfaces real problems rather than just signing off a build. Having someone who could move between those areas was a considerable help on a our team, as I could place him wherever he was needed most.
Daniel Jochem - 2026
Next World XR - Systems Development Engineer
Co-Worker
Shannon also is well-known in the team for designing intuitive interaction systems that hold up in the varying environments our experiences cover. What sets Shannon apart isn't just competence, it's the depth of thinking he brings to problems that most engineers haven't encountered before. VR presents unique engineering challenges: latency budgets, spatial input handling, performance constraints that leave no margin for error, and Shannon consistently delivers work that's both creative and rigorous.
Beyond the technical output, Shannon is the kind of engineer who makes the whole team better. When he puts on his QA hat, he constantly discovers new issues that none of the other engineers have caught through their seemingly-rigorous testing during development, and has the incredible ability to think of every edge case there could possibly be to exploit a feature to gain privilege or do things that should not be possible with the configuration the user's company possesses.
Shannon has a true thirst for knowledge and understanding and is willing to jump in and assist within any discipline of Games development. If you're building in the Games space and need someone who genuinely understands the intricacies of the craft and is proficient with wearing multiple hats at once, Shannon is exactly who you want!
I've had the pleasure of working with Shannon while in his position of Virtual Reality Software Engineer at Next World XR, and I can say without hesitation that he is one of the most dedicated and thorough engineers I've worked alongside.
Shannon has the rare ability to want to jump in and help in all aspects of development, wherever there is a weakness in the team he wants to try his best to fill the gap and always succeeds with great results. When Shannon comes across an issue or inconvenience, he gets in to the depths of why it happens and always figures out a unique solution to the problem. I can recall a moment when the framerate in one of our VR experiences wasn't quite high enough on the lowest spec headset we support, and was causing frame lag to the point it was slightly annoying on that specific headset, and through deep investigation and by using low-level rendering optimization he was able to achieve a 20 frame-per-second increase on that model of headset to the amazement of the team.
Hayden Morison - 2026
Next World XR - CEO
Supervisor
I am writing to offer my strongest recommendation for Shannon King, who worked as a VR Unity Developer at Next World from September 2023 to June 2026.
During that period, I had the chance to see Shannon’s work closely, and I can say without reservation that Shannon is one of the most capable and dependable developers I have had the pleasure of working alongside.
Shannon joined our team during a period of rapid growth and quickly became someone we relied on for internal and client VR projects.
Shannon built and maintained immersive VR training simulations used by enterprise clients across multiple industries,
consistently delivering VR experiences that were both technically polished and genuinely effective as learning tools. Shannon’s command of the full development
cycle, from prototyping interactions to optimizing performance across different headsets, meant he could take a concept from an instructional designer's brief all the way through to a shipped, classroom-ready VR module (notably the “TAFE - Nursing Project” was a highlight of his success).
What set Shannon apart, though, was not only technical skill but the way they worked with his team; he collaborated easily with instructional designers, QA, and subject-matter experts, translating non-technical requirements into elegant solutions. Shannon kept pace with our fast-
moving business, brought new techniques and tools to the team, and consistently raised the quality bar for everyone around him. Shannon’s exit from Next World was not from his lack of performance or skill, rather from redundancy.
I recommend Shannon King wholeheartedly and without hesitation; any team would be fortunate to have him, and I am confident he will be an asset wherever they go next.