May 2025’s Movers and Shakers: Sensemitter’s new CEO, King’s senior promotion, Epic Games’ head of Unreal Engine games business, and more

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To keep you up to date with the latest movers and shakers in the mobile games industry, we’ve put together a regular roundup of the latest hires, promotions and, in some cases, exits.

If you’ve recently joined a company or bagged a big promotion, or you’re an employer that’s just made a hire, drop us an email at news@pocketgamer.biz.

Top hires at Sensemitter and Ares

AI-powered playtest analyser Sensemitter has hired ad tech veteran Katie Madding as its new CEO. Madding brings over a decade of experience from Adjust in roles ranging from US account team lead to VP of product and ultimately chief product officer. She spent nearly three years in that final role at the company.

She also serves as a member of Forbes Technology Council and is a founding member of women-centric executive community Chief.

Madding’s appointment as Sensemitter CEO marks a major milestone in the company’s transition to a full-scale SaaS product offering. She formally joined her new role on April 21st, where she had responsibilities including overseeing product, growth, and team expansion.

“Katie brings not only the expertise and strategic clarity we need to scale, but also the kind of leadership energy that can transform teams,” said Sensemitter director Alex Ovcharov.

“We’re excited – and lucky – to have her leading the charge.”

Rogue Games founder and CEO Mike DaLaet is a veteran of Scopely, Mattel and more. Now, he’s joined mobile games newcomer Ares Interactive as president.

Ares Interactive was established one year ago, in May 2024, and is led by former Glu Mobile CEO Niccolo De Masi. A number of games industry veterans have already joined from Glu Mobile, Scopely, Kabam and more, now including DaLaet.

DaLaet previously worked at Glu Mobile too, more than a decade ago, as SVP of global publishing. His latest role was at Mattel, where he served as global head of digital gaming and a member of the board. He headed up the company’s entire digital apps and games business spanning more than 200 brands on console, PC, mobile and the web.

Heads and execs

In her fourth year back at match-3 giant King, Eva Ryott has been promoted to VP, head of live operations, shared tech.

Ryott has spent almost nine years at King across her career, having started as a data scientist driving monetisation for Pet Rescue Saga in 2013. She rose the ranks to senior producer, product manager by 2018 before shifting focus to Meta, where she led teams in central integrity and customer support as the conglomerate’s data science manager.

Ryott later returned to King where she has held senior roles since 2022, leading to her latest appointment.

“I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as head of live operations, shared tech at King,” she posted on LinkedIn.

“In this role, I will be responsible for advancing our tooling and technologies to support better and faster (real-time) decisions in our games – creating cohesive and relevant experiences for our players. With this, I am also transitioning from the Candy Crush game team into our shared tech organisation, serving multiple games across King.”

Fellow Swedish firm Stillfront has made two new promotions, with Jochen Gary advancing to chief marketing officer while Kieran O’Leary has fast-tracked to EVP of growth.

O’Leary joined Stillfront as EVP of growth platform this January, with his title change coming just four months later. He has brought experience from Rovio, Ubisoft and most recently Gameloft, building upon more than a decade’s games industry experience in his latest role.

Gary joined Stillfront in 2021, after 10 years in marketing roles at Goodgame Studios. Following his promotion to Stillfront chief marketing officer, he will report directly O’Leary as the company looks to bring its marketing and growth services closer together.

“Congratulations to both Kieran and Jochen, looking forward to this next chapter,” Stillfront posted on LinkedIn.

Movers at Epic, Lockwood, Google and more

Epic Games has promoted games veteran Ben Board to head of Unreal Engine games business in Western Europe. He’s been working at the Fortnite maker since 2017.

Ex-Jagex and Omeda Studios veteran Jody Zarkos joined Lockwood Publishing in 2023. Now she’s been promoted to people and talent lead, responsibilities will include overseeing talent attraction and managing a team of two.

Pedro Alcaria has been promoted from Google’s senior growth manager in games to principal growth manager after three years with the tech giant.

Tom Grinsted, meanwhile, has been promoted to PM director at Google Play, with involvement in games, Play Pass, services and loyalty.

María Díez has joined Day III Digital as head of production in a freelance capacity, betting on a long-term collaboration.

Game design advisor Paolo Gambardella is taking on a new consultancy role at match-3 developer Picante, his first major client since going freelance.

SuperScale, SuperPlay, super hires and more

With more than 21 years of experience in the games industry, Second Leap co-founder Antti Stén has departed from his studio and taken on a game programmer role at Bit Odd.

Candywriter has secured Deniz K as its new director of product marketing, set to leverage his experience in senior roles at Rovio, Gameforge and Supercell.

David Molnar has been promoted from VP of partnerships to CEO at UserWise.

Bringing more than five years’ experience in product marketing, Holly Cooper has joined Secret Mode as head of communications.

Sean Parmenter has been appointed director of customer success at SuperScale.

SuperPlay co-founder and CPO Elad Drory has joined Kokoon’s board of advisors as the company lays the foundations for its first launch.

Reuniting with Jam City founder Chris DeWolfe, Jeremy Horn has joined Reach Labs as a co-founder and COO, looking to build a platform intersecting UA, ecommerce and social media.

Shefali Johnson has stepped down from her role at Nodwin Gaming after more than a decade, moving to pastures new as CEO of Comic Con India.

Michael Wilson is spearheading Tiny Titan at Rhea Games, now the company’s lead producer.

With nearly two decades of experience across Activison, Riot Games and Netflix, Andrew Hoffacker has joined Annapurna as VP of game production.

Agata Foti joined Funday Games on May 1st, bringing over a decade’s experience from Kiloo. Her new role is as head of player insights (maternity cover).

Sam Devlin has moved from Microsoft to Meta to start his new role as AI Research Scientist. His passion is pushing boundaries in modern AI capabilities using digital games.