Jack J. McCauley

Jack McCauley is an American engineer, hardware designer, inventor, video game developer and philanthropist. As an engineer at RedOctane, he designed guitars and drums for the Guitar Hero video game series. He later worked at Oculus VR,

In 1980, McCauley was accepted into the U.S. Navy Nuclear Power School.

McCauley designed many of the guitar and drum peripherals for the Guitar Hero video game series.

McCauley created the hardware for early Guitar Hero guitars by reverse-engineering the guitars used in the Konami game Guitar Freaks. He also designed hardware peripherals for Silent Scope and EA Sports Active 2.

Oculus VR McCauley joined Oculus VR as vice president of engineering in August 2012, shortly after the company raised millions of dollars on Kickstarter for their first development kit. He served as VP Engineering at Oculus until March 2014 when the company was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion. He left Oculus immediately after the acquisition was completed. He claims to have donated all the money he received from the Facebook buyout to charity.

While at Oculus, he designed test equipment and managed China-based manufacturing of the Oculus DK1 and DK2, the company's development hardware that was shipped to game developers years before the 2016 release of their consumer product, the Oculus Rift.

Lucid VR In 2017, McCauley joined Lucid VR as Chief Engineer to lead worldwide manufacturing of their flagship virtual and augmented reality camera, the VR180 LucidCam.

Inventions, credits, and accomplishments McCauley worked on creating audio effects; computer peripherals; game controllers; light gun technology; composite HID USB device for gaming; and guitar and drum controllers for the Guitar Hero franchise.

Video gameRoleDeveloperGuitar Hero IIDirector of R&DRedOctaneGuitar Hero III: Legends of RockDirector of R&DRedOctaneGuitar Hero World TourDirector of R&DRedOctaneOculus DK1 Development KitVP EngineeringOculus VROculus DK2 Development KitVP EngineeringOculus VR

Philanthropy In 2015 he, Paul Jacobs and others funded the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at the UC Berkeley College of Engineering; , he is an Innovator in Residence there.