From September 5, 2023 to November 25, 2024, I was working as an Electronics Lab Engineer for the State of Nevada's Gaming Control Board. In this role, I was charged with evaluating the submissions of new software for slot machines and other software that is used in calculating revenue from gaming activity for compliance with Nevada Gaming Commission regulations. This task involved reading and understanding the software's code, reviewing external compliance testing, and conducting hands-on testing of the submissions to ensure they interoperate according to NGCB technical standards.
I was also charged with conducting root-cause analysis of instances where a patron filed a dispute alleging that funds were inappropriately not returned after a technical fault occurred. In this capacity, I would often have to examine memory dumps from the machine to ascertain if funds were on the machine's credit meter and what the outcome of the next game would have been.
Evaluating Submissions
For every new slot machine game, operating system, game platform, or other gaming-associated software component, Nevada requires that the Gaming Control Board issue approvals to ensure the industry remained above-board. I was one of the engineers charged with reviewing the submissions for compliance. In this task, I would have a 1-day turnaround time to analyze the source code, determine what operations are executed from the time the game takes the player's money to the time the final outcome is displayed, and whether that outcome is based solely on the random number generator. This required me to be able to read and understand numerous different programming languages such as C#, Java, C++, and JavaScript.