Staff Software Engineer, Riot Games
Machine Learning - Riot Games Data
$183.3-256.6k
+ Incentive compensation + Equity
Player-focused game development platform
Job no longer available
Player-focused game development platform
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$183.3-256.6k
+ Incentive compensation + Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To be the most player-focused game company in the world.
Role
Who you are
- 6+ years of experience as a software engineer
- Fluency in Mandarin, including spoken and written communication on technical topics
- Experience building software across multiple languages (e.g., Golang, Python, or C++)
- Experience designing, building, and contributing to the live operations of high throughput distributed systems in microservice ecosystems
- Experience leading the development and operation of large-scale machine learning systems, including gathering requirements, designing production-ready architectures, and sustainably supporting high availability services
- Experience collaborating on projects across multiple teams and disciplines, including with data scientists and analysts
- 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)
- Familiarity with tools used in ML model training (e.g. Tensorflow, PyTorch, Mlflow), high performance inference engines (e.g., Triton, BentoML), or MLOps frameworks (e.g., Seldon, Kubeflow)
- Experience coaching those around them across all roles, and mentoring mid and senior level engineers
What the job involves
- 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
- VALORANT is Riot's take on a character-based tactical shooter (for more info on VALORANT click here!)
- As a Staff Software Engineer on the VALORANT team you will build player-facing game features powered by machine learning services
- You will support and improve the way VALORANT game clients, game servers, and backend services publish and process data at global scale, and how we automate the preparation and processing of that data in our data warehouse
- You will collaborate with engineers, data scientists, producers, game designers and other disciplines in using data to drive player impact
- You'll influence the technical direction for how data services around Riot are built and operated
- You will also collaborate with international colleagues, especially teams supporting VALORANT in China
- This role reports to the lead of the VAL Data Ops team within Riot’s central data organization
- Create and advance the technical vision for how data is used to improve VALORANT while also investing in the larger data ecosystem
- Lead development of game features that integrate machine learning and experimentation into the game server, backend services, and data warehouse
- Extend VALORANT’s ML ecosystem by helping the team earn new opportunities with compelling prototypes, by hardening existing systems, and by onboarding new customers to our models and services
- Support data scientists and analysts with tools and automation that make their workflows more efficient and repeatable
- Ensure that data systems meet game team standards for reliability and maintainability
- Create and contribute to engineering best practices, development processes, and coding standards on VALORANT
- Mentor other data developers on the team
Our take
Riot Games has grown into one of the world’s most prominent online and mobile game developers, due in large part to the success of its 2009 flagship title League of Legends which hosts over 120M users every month.
Riot is riding the wave of online gaming growth, having made a well timed switch from PC-only into mobile-based gaming, as capitalizing on the rising popularity of esports, with the League of Legends World Championships one of the most watched events in the space.
While expanding its portfolio with new titles has played a role in Riot's evolution, the company's continued success is more firmly rooted in the enduring strength of League of Legends itself. Riot has built a vast ecosystem around the game, from its global eSports tournaments tand regional leagues to its numerous brand partnerships and sponsorships. The League of Legends World Championship in particular remains a cultural and commercial powerhouse, drawing massive viewership and sustaining global engagement. And since its acquisition by Tencent in 2011, Riot has also expanded its presence in Asia, opening new studios in Shanghai and beyond, to further strengthen its site to markets where competitive gaming and eSports are deeply embedded.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
24% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (2 rounds)
Sep 2009
$8m
SERIES C
Jul 2008
$7m
EARLY VC
Total funding: $15m
Company benefits
- Healthcare: Medical, dental, and vision plans that cover you as well as your spouse/domestic partner and children.
- Family Care: Life insurance, parental leave, plus short and long-term disability.
- Open Paid Time Off: In addition to holidays, a 2-week end of year break, and a 1-week mid-year break, Rioters are trusted to take the time they need throughout the year.
- Retirement: Riot matches retirement contributions so you can continue to play games long after you retire.
- Play Fund: Riot’s annual play fund allows Rioters to broaden their knowledge of the games that matter to players and the community.
- Donation Matching: Riot matches donations of time and money to nonprofits to double down on support.
Company HQ
Sawtelle, Los Angeles, CA
Leadership
Brandon Beck
(Co-Founder & Co-Chairman)Prior to co-founding Riot Games in 2006, Brandon was a Management Consultant at Bain & Company.
Marc Merrill
(Co-Founder, CPO & Co-Chairman)After a degree at the University of Southern California, they worked as a U.S. Bank Analyst and a Manager of Advanstar Communications. They co-founded Riot Games with Brandon in September 2006, alongside being a Principal of NaHCo3 since 2016.
A. Dylan Jadeja
(CEO)Dylan joined the Riot team in 2011 as CFO and COO, becoming CEO in 2023. Prior to this, he spent 7 years at Goldman Sachs as a VP and nearly 4 years at A.T. Kearney as a Senior Associate.
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