Avin Zarlez is a Senior Software Engineer at Microsoft and an independent game developer from the San Francisco Bay Area. They are transgender, non-binary, and use They/Them/Theirs pronouns.

Avin co-founded Yobonja, an independent game studio, right after graduating college. They co-created the hit game Blast Monkeys, which was the number one app on Android for 6+ months during 2011. Avin started working for Microsoft in 2013 as a Technical Evangelist, teaching developers how to make better games and more successful companies. Now as part of CSE they focus on Spatial Computing, Mixed Reality, Conversational AI and DevOps. Avin’s solo company, PlayPerro, is where they can release their experiments developed in their spare time. Most notably, their project “#DanceTogether” was a “Big Game Selection” at the IndieCade 2016 game festival.