Staff Software Engineer, Machine Learning

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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 embody engineering excellence to your immediate collaborators and to the whole game dev team. You'll lead from the front through your individual contributions and support others through mentorship and participation in the wider tech community.

As a Staff Software Engineer working on Riot Data’s New, Emerging, and R&D Studio (NERDS) Data team, you will help build and launch brand new games! Through your direct contributions and your mentorship, you'll influence the technical direction for how ML/AI services are built, scaled and are operated. To enable ML and AI across Riot’s upcoming titles, you will develop required telemetry across all game systems and services. When teams need to use data for designer tools or new game features, you will collaborate across disciplines to design and build new data applications. You will report to the Engineering Manager for NERDS Data.

Responsibilities:

Lead development of game features that use machine learning in game servers, backend services, and client machines; gather requirements, design production-ready architectures, and support high availability services
Guide engineers from game and data teams in building telemetry to launch, operate, and improve new games
Ensure that data systems meet game team technical standards
Support game designers, data scientists, and analysts with tools and automation that make their workflows more efficient; gather datasets, build prototypes, and look for innovative ways to leverage ML/AI for game development
Improve engineering best practices, development processes, and coding standards across game teams
Mentor other data developers on the team

Required Qualifications:

6+ years of relevant experience across machine learning engineering, software engineering, data scientist, or data engineering roles (3+ years in data and/or machine learning focused roles)
Experience building software across multiple languages (e.g., Golang, C++, or Python)
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 coaching across multiple technical roles, and mentoring mid and senior level engineers
Familiarity with common tools for machine learning (e.g. Tensorflow, PyTorch, MLflow), reinforcement learning, (e.g., RLlib, Gym/Gymnasium), or generative AI (e.g., LLMs, diffusion models)
Excellent written and verbal communication.
Impact player with a track record of navigating ambiguity.

Desired Qualifications:

Experience leading data integration projects, including gathering requirements, defining data models, and sustainably supporting data warehousing needs
Experience working with data scientists and analysts
Interest in working with Unreal Engine
Familiarity working in an Agile environment

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 the experiences of players, this could be the role for you!

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.

(Los Angeles Only) Base salary range between $178,500 USD - $249,900 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.

(St. Louis Only) Base salary range between $170,000 USD - $238,100 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.

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.

Estimated Salary range:

Our salary intelligence, powered by our AI algorithms, has calculated an estimated range for this position between $130,000 - $150,000 . Please note that the actual salary for this position may vary, as it is dependent on various factors including but not limited to experience, location, and market dynamics.

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