Vatsal Bhardwaj has been named the company’s chief product officer. Bhardwaj, an experienced gaming executive who most recently worked as the general manager and director of Game Tech for Amazon Web Services (AWS), joins the Skillz executive team, bolstering the company’s executive team with seasoned executives from several of the world’s most recognizable businesses.
“Bhardwaj joins the Skillz leadership team at a critical moment as we aggressively scale and build our business throughout the world, bringing nearly two decades of expertise from Amazon and Facebook.” “Under his leadership, our product team will develop and deploy innovative new gameplay technologies, accelerate our entry into multiplayer synchronous gaming, and expand brand-sponsored tournaments and partnerships, providing the best possible experience for both our players and developers,” said Andrew Paradise, CEO, and founder of Skillz.
“I am excited to head the product team at a time when Skillz is rethinking the future of mobile gaming while also expanding the company. “I’m excited to join Skillz at this critical juncture in its development, leading the product and technology teams ahead to expand the company’s creative product offerings and bring enjoyable, fair, and trustworthy games to players all over the world,” Bhardwaj said.
Bhardwaj will report directly to Paradise as chief product officer and will manage Skillz’s global product team as the firm strives to become the world’s premier competitive entertainment brand. Bhardwaj will head the product and technology teams in this capacity and will be in charge of driving the development of new services and products from idea to market.
He and his team will design and implement the company’s product roadmap, which will include industry-leading features that will help developers establish profitable Skillz companies. In addition, as Skillz continues to develop, Bhardwaj will assist in scaling the teams, operational procedures, and systems.
Bhardwaj was the Game Tech leader at AWS, where he was responsible for developing one of the largest open-source efforts, the Open 3D engine, Amazon GameSparks, increasing Amazon Gamelift, and launching various new gaming ventures. Bhardwaj formerly worked at Facebook as the head of product for a variety of organizations, where he oversaw projects and teams in engineering, product management, game design, production, art, UI/UX, and analytics.
He oversaw Facebook’s India growth teams, as well as the development and scaling of the Oculus App Store, developer services, and other revenue-generating activities for Oculus. Before joining Facebook, Bhardwaj was the GM and Head of Studios at Storm8, as well as other positions at Match.com and Zynga.
Bhardwaj earned an MBA from MIT, a master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Duke University, and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Gujarat University in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.