Peter Stewart

Lead Software Engineer (Engineering Manager) · Wizards of the Coast

Generous with trust. Rigorous with proof.

Peter Stewart

I’m Peter Stewart. I lead an engineering team at Wizards of the Coast on Magic: The Gathering Arena, a live-service card game with millions of player accounts on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.

I’ve spent 12+ years building software in fintech and games. The work I care about most: holding a high bar for engineering quality, making processes better every release, helping engineers level up, and adopting AI responsibly, with clear guardrails and measured results.

Delivery
45+ content releases, 25+ of them full card sets, all on time
People
6 to 8 engineers, Associate through Principal
Rigor
Peer-reviewed research in topology
Player
Competitive Commander (cEDH) guest on multiple community channels

Wizards of the Coast

Lead Software Engineer (Engineering Manager) · Magic: The Gathering Arena · Apr 2022 to present

Arena’s card sets are tied to tabletop Magic releases, so the cards and the launch date are set upstream, months in advance. With scope and date both fixed, the only lever left is how well we plan.

Delivery
Led engineering for a feature team (2022 to 2025) and now the Rule team (2026 to present), which builds Arena’s Game Rules Engine (GRE): the system that runs Magic’s rules for every card in the game.
People
Manage 6 to 8 engineers, Associate through Principal, and have driven promotions at several levels.
Hiring
Hiring manager for the intern program. I set up a cross-team intern project that shipped a player-facing feature, and I’ve conducted 50+ engineering interviews.
AI governance
Inaugural member of my organization’s AI stewardship committee, helping set policy for responsible use of AI tools.
Evidence
Built tooling that makes delivery progress and cross-team dependencies visible, so planning starts from shared facts.
Recognition
I make sure the people behind each release get credit. That habit grew into a standing org-wide forum that celebrates what every release delivered.
Community
Chosen as one of two Arena representatives at MagicCon Las Vegas 2023.

How I lead

I’m a servant leader, which means I work for my team, not the other way around. These are my four core values.

  1. Be kind. Be courteous. Be humble.

    The team’s needs come before mine. I will go a long way to get people what they need, and to find work that plays to their strengths.

  2. Trust but verify.

    I give people real ownership and back decisions with evidence. It’s why I build tools that make plans and dependencies visible.

  3. Cultivate curiosity over judgment.

    When something goes wrong, the first question is what happened, not who. I approach new technology the same way: try it, measure it, share what I learn.

  4. A positive attitude leads to positive outcomes.

    I choose optimism on purpose, and I try to be the steady voice in the room when things get hard.

At Wizards, our customers are players, and I’m honored to contribute to their joy, a responsibility I never take for granted.

Where I’ve worked

Pure mathematics, then fintech, then live-service games.

  1. 2022–present

    Wizards of the Coast

    Lead Software Engineer (Engineering Manager) · Magic: The Gathering Arena

  2. 2020–2021

    Charles Schwab

    Software Developer IV

    Modernized retirement contribution and distribution systems that move billions of dollars each quarter, migrating them from legacy COBOL mainframes to distributed, API-driven services. Mentored junior developers and conducted technical interviews.

  3. 2020

    The Beneficient Company Group

    .NET Developer

  4. 2018–2019

    Global Lending Services

    Senior Manager, Technical Analysis

    Architected the integration between Salesforce and loan origination, with sub-second transfers and room for ten times the volume. Built automation that saved hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and redesigned the technical interview process.

  5. 2018

    CoreLogic

    Senior Professional, Engineer

  6. 2014–2017

    Capital One

    Software Engineer, Senior Associate

    Built mobile and web brokerage products for iOS, Android, and the web, and migrated enterprise data to AWS. Our team won Capital One’s enterprise-wide TechXcellence Award as one of the top five teams in the company.

On my own time

Self-hosted AI agent platform

2024 to present

An always-on assistant I designed and run on my own homelab hardware, with persistent memory, a custom skill framework, and native messaging integration. It keeps me hands-on with agent orchestration, LLM APIs, and the ways production AI systems actually fail.

Education and publication

  1. 2016 – 2017

    Georgia Institute of Technology

    MS Coursework, Computer Science (Machine Learning specialization)

  2. 2010 – 2014

    Clemson University

    BS, Mathematical Sciences (Departmental Honors Diploma)

  3. 2010 – 2014

    Clemson University

    BS, Computer Science

S. Anderson, A. Smith, P. Stewart, M. Tesemma, J. Usatine. “A Topological Structure on Certain Initial Algebras.” Topology and its Applications 180 (2015): 199–208. doi:10.1016/j.topol.2014.11.008

Email is the best way to reach me.