Ofek Wittenberg
Principal Software Engineer
Xbox · Leading the design and build of the next generation of gaming.
Summary
Over a decade building distributed systems and cloud platforms across gaming, productivity, healthcare, and fintech. I specialize in high-throughput, low-latency backends, zero-downtime cloud migrations, and leading engineers through complex platform work.
Experience
Microsoft2017 – Present
Xbox Platform Services · Senior to Principal Software Engineer2023 – Present
- Tech lead for the next-generation Xbox console platform. Architected the ground-up rewrite and cloud migration of the System & Content Update Service, a tier-0 system serving every Xbox client, onto 2000 Kubernetes pods across 5 clusters.
- Designed and shipped a novel hybrid distributed cache solution that holds strong consistency past a million requests per second using CDC-driven cache updates/invalidation. The auth hot path answers sub-millisecond (0.145 ms at p50); client calls fell from 250 ms to 20 ms, at a 95% cache hit rate.
- Delivered the cutover with zero downtime and no client changes across tens of millions of consoles and PCs, shadowing live traffic and comparing responses to de-risk every step.
- Driving Xbox's AI platform/strategy: agent workflows, internal-system harnesses, plugin marketplace, evals, and skills gating org-wide changes.
Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) · Intermediate Software Engineer to Senior2020 – 2023
- Joined as one of xCloud's earliest engineers and set its architectural foundation: microservices, Kubernetes, and a cloud-first platform managing 22,000+ pods across 7 clusters.
- Designed and built xCloud's edge compute encoder platform from scratch across 60+ edge regions; owned orchestration, client/compute/service protocols, cloud networking, auth, and the final client-to-compute handshake.
- Owned the authentication service, xCloud's highest-throughput service at around 1,000 RPS, and built its game-server routing from scratch across 21 regions.
Office 365 Systems Engineering · Software Engineer2017 – 2020
- A core engineer migrating Office 365 from legacy source control to Git and Azure DevOps, modernizing engineering systems and dev flows for 3,000+ engineers; presented the new processes to audiences of 1,000+.
- Modernized the functional-test infrastructure orchestrating 10,000+ VMs for all Office pull-request gating, one of the most complex workflow engines in the company.
Centrality.ai · Software Engineer · Contract2017
- Full-stack delivery on a blockchain platform: built a data-migration system and integrated a secure payments and billing pipeline handling sensitive customer data.
Orion Health · Software Engineer2014 – 2016
- Built enterprise Java web applications powering all hospitals in Australia and New Zealand.
Ventures & Selected Projects
TouchPhone · Co-founder & Lead Engineer2011 – 2013
- Co-founded a hardware and software startup at 17, building proprietary GSM firmware that turned iPod Touches into fully-functional phones. Sold 10,000+ units across Oceania; acquired in 2013 by a European buyer who scaled the product across Europe.
Smart-Contract Security & DeFi Engineering · Independent
- Designed and operated an automated suite of DeFi services and a smart-contract auditing and static-analysis toolchain. Used it to uncover exploits in malicious contracts and publicly flag multiple rug-pull projects, helping the community avoid millions in losses.
Education
University of Auckland · BE (Hons), Computer Software Engineering2013 – 2016
- Top Engineering Honours Project: placed 1st overall in the engineering cohort; research published at an ACM conference (WiSurr: synchronized, ad-hoc audio broadcast across mobile devices over arbitrary networks).
Expertise
- Distributed systems at scale: hyperscale, high-throughput, low-latency services; distributed caching; distributed and NoSQL databases.
- Cloud & platform: Azure, Kubernetes, microservices, cloud-first platform design, zero-downtime migrations.
- Delivery & reliability: client and hardware integration, SLA-driven operations, authentication, network routing.
- Leadership: technical leadership and mentoring; leading teams of engineers to land complex, cross-team initiatives.