Staff Software Engineer, Machine Learning - Emerging Games Data

Engineers at Riot master their craft by building, launching, and operating games that delight players all over the world. As a Staff Software Engineer you will dive into projects that focus on team cohesiveness and cross-team goals. You'll lead development efforts, steer design processes, and exemplify the team’s engineering culture.

As a Staff Software Engineer on the Riot Data New, Emerging, and R&D Studio team, you will contribute robust and reliable data solutions to help enhance titles throughout the game development lifecycle. You'll use your expertise with large scale AI/ML data systems to help us build efficient solutions, collaborating closely with other engineers on the Data team, and mentoring them. You will report directly to the engineering manager for Riot Data’s New, Emerging, and R&D Studio Data team.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the development and operation of large-scale machine learning systems, including gathering requirements, designing production-ready architecture, and sustainably supporting high availability services.
• Build, deploy, optimize and maintain machine learning models.
• Lead development of game features that integrate machine learning into the game server, backend services, and data warehouse.
• Support data scientists, designers, QA, and analysts with tools and automation that make their workflows more efficient and repeatable.
• Work closely with game designers, engineers, and leadership to understand their needs and gather datasets, build prototypes, and look for innovative ways to leverage generative models for game development.

Required Qualifications:

• BS/MS degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 6+ years of experience as a software engineer (3+ years in data and/or machine learning focused roles).
• Familiarity with common tools for machine learning (e.g. Mlflow, Tensorflow, PyTorch), reinforcement learning, (e.g., RLlib, Gym/Gymnasium), and transformer-based models for language.
• Experience building software across multiple languages (e.g., Golang, Python, or C++).
• Experience with building and maintaining complex event driven systems.
• Experience leading the development and operation of large-scale, end-to-end machine learning systems, including gathering requirements, designing production-ready architecture, and sustainably supporting high availability services.
• Experience with data processing (e.g., Spark, BigQuery, DataProc), storage (e.g., S3, Google Cloud Storage), transport (e.g., Kafka, PubSub), and orchestration (e.g., Airflow, Luigi).
• Experience deploying cloud infrastructure (e.g., AWS, GCP) using containers and orchestration (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), managed using infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform, Ansible).
• Experience with modern MLOPs platforms.
• Experience coaching those around them across all roles, and mentoring mid and senior level engineers.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• Impact player with a track record of navigating ambiguity.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience or interest in working with Unreal Engine.
• Familiarity with modern ML platforms (e.g. Triton inference server, Seldon Core).

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this could be your role!

Our Perks:

Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code . Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming .